REESE'  LIBRARY 

OP    THE 

UNIVERSITY    OF    CALIFORNIA. 

Received. 
Accessions  No. 


Uniform  with  this  Volume. 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  HUMANITY. 

A    SERIES  OF  SERMONS. 

By  THOMAS  STARR   KING.      Edited,  with  a  Memoir,   by  EDWIN  P. 
WHIPPLE.     Fine  Steel  Portrait.     121110.     $2.00. 


"  The  volume  contains  twenty-two  discourses,  all  of  which  are  alive 
with  the  vigorous  and  persuasive  eloquence  which  raised  Mr.  King  to  so 
high  a  rank  among  the  distinguished  preachers  of  the  country.  Though 

liberal  in  creed,  they  are  singularly  evangelical  in  spirit These 

extracts  give  no  real  conception  of  the  richness  of  these  sermons  of  Mr. 
King  in  thought,  knowledge,  expression  ;  far  less  of  the  evidences  they 
afford  of  the  elevation  and  nobility  of  nature  which  no  fertility  of  think- 
ing and  no  resources  of  rhetoric  can  mimic.  The  man  was,  in  soul  and 
will,  what  he  preached."  —New  York  Tribune. 

"They  present  every  aspect  of  his  many-sided  mind  and  character, 
and  are  upon  topics  which  will  never  lose  their  freshness  or  impor- 
tance as  long  as  man  has  a  religious  nature,  which  lifts  him  heaven- 
ward. Read  only  for  their  literary  beauty  and  grace  of  style,  and  for 
their  keen  appreciation  of  Nature,  they  will  be  found  very  charming 
and  suggestive  ;  but  read  for  their  quickening  and  stimulating  influence 
upon  the  religious  life,  they  take  on  added  significance,  and  are  full  of 
power  and  helpfulness."  —  Boston  Journal. 


HOUGHTON,  OSGOOD  &  CO.,  Publishers,  Boston. 


SUBSTANCE  AND  SHOW, 


AND  OTHER  LECTURES. 


BY 

THOMAS   STARR   KING. 

EDITED,  WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION, 

BY    EDWIN  P.  WHIPPLE. 


LIBRARY 


BOSTON : 
HOUGHTON,   OSGOOD   AND   COMPANY. 

&be  ftttotoe  lircss,  Cambrfoge. 
1879. 


COPYRIGHT,  1877. 
BY  JAMES  R.  OSGOOD  &  CO. 


UNIVERSITY  PRESS  :  WELCH,  BIGELOW,  &  Co., 
CAMBRIDGE. 


K 
1*7* 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTION vii 

I.    SUBSTANCE   AND    SHOW;  OR,   FACTS   AND 

FORCES i 

II.    THE  LAWS  OF  DISORDER  ....  34 

III.  SOCRATES 78 

IV.  SIGHT  AND  INSIGHT 148 

V.      HlLDEBRAND IQO 

VI.    Music 231 

VII.    EXISTENCE  AND  LIFE 254 

VIII.    THE  EARTH  AND  THE  MECHANIC  ARTS  .  275 

*~  IX.    DANIEL  WEBSTER 299 

X.    BOOKS  AND  READING        ....  354 

^  XI.   THE  PRIVILEGE  AND  DUTIES  OF  PATRIOTISM  389 

INTELLECTUAL   DUTIES    OF    STUDENTS    IN 

THEIR  ACADEMIC  YEARS  ....  413 


LIBRARY 

UNIVKHSITV   <>F 


INTRODUCTION. 


THOSE  who  have  read  the  biographical  pref- 
ace to  Mr.  King's  sermons,  published  about 
a  month  ago  under  the  general  title  of  "  Christian- 
ity and  Humanity,"  do  not  need  to  be  informed 
that  his  influence  extended  far  beyond  his  parish 
and  his  denomination,  and  included  that  vast  mul- 
titude of  listeners  who  are  more  or  less  magneti- 
cally affected  by  the  lyceum  lecturer.  Indeed,  he 
was  one  of  the  foremost  speakers  who  followed 
in  the  train  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  in  erecting 
the  lecture  platform  into  a  kind  of  free  pulpit, 
from  which  the  advanced  ideas  of  spiritual  think- 
ers, philanthropists,  and  reformers  were  diffused 
through  the  community.  It  is  needless  to  speak 
of  Emerson's  supremacy  in  this  line  of  thought 
and  endeavor,  for  it  is  now  universally  acknowl- 
edged. By  carefully  avoiding  all  controversy 
with  the  good  and  learned  men  who  were  both 
shocked  by  his  radicalism  and  charmed  by  his 
genius  and  character,  he  made  his  simple  affirma- 
tions felt  as  forces  wherever  his  voice  was  heard 
in  our  multitudinous  lyceums.  In  the  course  of 
a  few  years  he  did  much  to  emancipate  the  popu- 
lar mind  from  its  ingrained  theological  and  politi- 


viii  Introduction. 

cal  prejudices,  and  he  did  this  without  severely 
wounding  or  insulting  the  feelings  and  opinions 
of  the  champions  of  the  established  order.  In 
spite  of  his  occasional  indulgence  in  certain 
caprices  and  audacities  of  his  individuality,  he 
commonly  confined  himself  to  the  glad  work  of 
shedding  light  on  the  questions  he  treated  ;  and 
the  main  object  of  his  teaching  was  directed  to 
disentangling  the  imperative  ideas  of  truth  and 
goodness,  of  beauty  and  justice,  from  the  partial 
views  of  all  forcible  individualities,  including  his 
own.  He  aimed  to  purify  his  intellect  and  moral 
sentiment  from  all  personal  bias,  and  to  make  his 
reason  and  conscience  worthy  to  receive  and  an- 
nounce the  inspirations  of  impersonal  truth  and 
morality.  His  constitution  of  mind  and  charac- 
ter instinctively  led  him  to  avoid  controversy  as 
something  which  would  inevitably  enfeeble  his 
faculty  of  spiritual  insight,  and  give  him  a  cheap 
victory  over  opponents  at  the  immense  expense 
of  interrupting  his  work  of  patient  self-discipline 
as  a  seer.  Then  his  friend,  Theodore  Parker,  was 
always  at  hand  to  concentrate  on  himself  every 
element  of  pugnacious  opposition  to  the  new  ideas 
with  a  pugnacity  that  no  controversies  could  ap- 
pease, and  who  was  incapable  of  feeling  any  per- 
secution so  keenly  as  the  persecution  of  silence, 
especially  when  it  came  from  the  Unitarian  breth- 
ren whom  he  criticised.  Both  of  these  men  la- 
bored, each  after  his  particular  fashion,  to  make  the 
lecture-room  a  place  where  both  independence  of 


Introduction.  ix 

opinion  and  peculiarity  of  character  could  be  freely 
expressed ;  and  a  third,  Wendell  Phillips,  needed 
nothing  but  his  incomparable  power  of  eloquence, 
which  was  at  once  seductive  and  smiting,  to  rec- 
ommend himself  to  any  audience  which  he  con- 
sented to  address,  whether  he  spoke  on  "The 
Lost  Arts,"  or  on  subjects  connected  with  the  re- 
form movements  of  the  time. 

Mr.  King  became  a  force  in  the  lecture-room, 
as  he  became  a  force  in  the  pulpit,  by  the  happy 
union  in  his  nature  of  brilliancy  of  talent  with 
beneficence  of  character.  Few  persons  will  stand 
the  test  of  that  pitiless  analysis  which  austerely 
probes  down  through  intellect  and  conscience  to 
the  roots  of  individual  disposition,  regardless  of 
all  the  "  grafts  "  which  culture  or  "  grace  "  have 
added  to  the  original  stock  ;  but  those  who  knew 
King  intimately  must  admit  that,  in  penetrating  to 
the  heart  of  his  being,  they  found  nothing  there 
which  contradicted  the  first  impression  that  he  was 
sound  to  the  core, — that  he  was  instinctively 
sympathetic,  unselfish,  and  humane.  This  essen- 
tial goodness  made  him  loved  and  respected  even 
by  those  who  most  violently  disagreed  with  him 
in  opinion  ;  for  there  was  nothing  of  the  sullen  and 
arrogant  self-sufficiency  of  the  dogmatist  and  ego- 
tist in  his  most  confident,  masculine,  and  joyous 
utterance  of  his  own  perceptions  of  truth.  Only 
such  persons  as  were  under  the  slavery  of  fear, 
envy,  and  malignity  could  suspect  that  his  intellect 
ever  became  the  organ  of  such  ignoble  passions. 


x  Introduction. 

As  a  result  of  this  original  felicity  of  nature,  his 
eloquence  was  as  persuasive  as  it  was  inspiring 
and  instructive.  It  had  that  subtle  element  of 
influence  which  can  only  come  from  a  humane 
disposition,  underlying  thought  and  style,  and 
vitalizing  both.  What  King  said  was  excellent ; 
but  the  spirit  in  which  he  said  it  was  felt  by  per- 
sons of  all  grades  of  culture  as  a  precious  some- 
thing which  abolished  all  distinctions  of  social 
"  clanship,"  and,  for  the  time,  bound  them  together 
in  the  kinship  of  a  common  humanity.  In  short, 
his  eloquence  had  that  nameless  charm  which 
made  it  universally  attractive.  It  will  be  observed, 
by  the  reader  of  the  present  volume,  that  this  per- 
sonal attractiveness  was  accompanied  by  knowl- 
edge, thought,  wit,  humor,  fancy,  and  imagination  ; 
that  every  faculty  of  the  lecturer's  mind  and  every 
feeling  of  his  heart  was  engaged  in  the  task  of 
fastening  the  attention  of  his  hearers  to  the  sub- 
ject he  discussed  ;  but  still,  even  in  the  reading, 
we  feel  that  the  great  beauty  of  the  performance 
streaming  through  all  the  minor  beauties  of  detail, 
is  the  beautiful  character  of  Starr  King  uncon- 
sciously impressed  upon  it. 

There  are  many  lecturers  still  living  who  will 
remember  the  effect  of  the  lecture  on  "  Substance 
and  Show  "  by  their  experience  in  following  King 
the  week  after  its  delivery.  As  soon  as  they 
arrived,  the  Lecture  Committee  inevitably  began 
to  talk  about  King's  "  Substance  and  Show"  ;  as 
soon  as  each  had  concluded  his  particular  address, 


Introduction.  xi 

the  Lecture  Committee,  after  the  briefest  of  all 
polite  pauses,  recurred  to  the  more  pleasing  topic 
of  King  and  his  "Substance  and  Show."  The 
popularity  of  this  admirable  lecture  was  one  of 
the  finest  of  all  tributes  ever  paid  to  the  average 
taste  and  intelligence  of  the  lecture  audiences  of 
the  country.  In  a  letter  to  a  friend,  in  December 
1851,  King  says  :  "  My  lecture  has  become  a  fact 
and  a  show ;  whether  it  is  a  substance  and  a  force 

is  questionable You  do  not,  I  think,  take 

the  antithesis  I  make,  or  exactly  appreciate  the 
drift  of  the  plan.  The  aim  of  it  is  wholly  prac- 
tical, —  to  break  down,  in  the  popular  mind,  the 
inveterate  association  of  strength  and  permanence 
with  the  visible  side  of  the  world  and  things  we 
can  *  sense.'  The  illustrations  from  science  are 
taken  to  buttress  faith  in  the  invisible  and  intangi- 
ble as  being  the  causal  and  productive  agencies. 
Substance  is  that  which  stands  under,  supports, 
moulds,  etc. ;  and  the  whole  visible  universe  really 
leans  upon  secret  impalpable  energies,  to  which  it 
owes  shape,  color,  and  its  myriad  varieties.  I  make 
no  antithesis  between  material  and  immaterial 
forces,  but  show  how  all  the  glories  and  differences 
in  nature  are  due  to  the  secret  working  of  electric, 
actinic,  magnetic  powers,  and  that  the  whole  order 
and  science  of  nature  is  in  the  last  analysis  the 
expression  of  Divine  ideas.  With  this  aid  from 
nature,  I  go  into  the  historic  world  and  moral  life, 
to  show  that  ideas,  sentiments,  moral  truth,  are 
the  most  vigorous,  despotic,  un  wasting  substances, 


xii  Introduction. 

since  nations  lean  on  them ;  and  character,  the 
great  reality  and  most  efficient  force  we  know,  is 
the  organization  of  these.  It  is  a  Lyceum  Ser- 
mon." As  to  his  figurative  style,  he  tells  his  cor- 
respondent that  rhetoric,  considered  "  as  jewelry 
and  rouge,  is  sufficiently  contemptible,"  but  that 
it  is  legitimate  when  it  is  the  expression  of  what 
is  in  itself  beautiful.  "  You  are  not,"  he  adds, 
"  charitable  enough  to  rhetoric.  Equations,  plus 
and  minus,  algebraic  signs  and  diagrams,  are  not 
the  ideals  of  the  perfection  of  speech.  God  is 
a  glorious  rhetorician.  How  he  hides  his  mathe- 
matics and  bald  geometry !  Does  n't  he  orna- 
ment all  the  truth  he  states  to  us  through  nature, 
and  when  he  teaches  a  chemical  and  vegetable 
science  in  the  oak,  the  elm,  and  the  palm,  does  n't 
he  perorate  in  their  bossy,  waving  canopy  of 
leaves?" 

In  the  lectures  on  "The  Laws  of  Disorder," 
"  Sight  and  Insight,"  and  "  Existence  and  Life," 
the  same  general  tendency  is  observable  which 
lends  so  much  attractiveness  to  "  Substance  and 
Show."  In  reading  them  we  are  constantly  wit- 
nessing the  transformation  of  physical  into  spirit- 
ual laws,  or,  as  Emerson  would  say,  "  the  meta- 
morphosis of  natural  into  spiritual  facts."  The 
fertility  of  the  writer's  mind  in  illustrations,  analo- 
gies, and  images  compels  the  reader  to  follow  the 
course  of  the  thinking  with  a  pleased  and  ever- 
expectant  attention  to  the  end.  These  lectures, 
as  originally  delivered  before  lyceums,  met  the 


Introduction.  xiii 

wants  of  all  the  classes  huddled  together  in  a 
lecture  audience.  The  general  strain  was  so  high 
and  noble  that  everybody  who  listened  felt  up- 
lifted and  ennobled.-  It  was  not  merely,  in  the 
case  of  King's  discourse,  that 

"  Rustic  life  and  poverty 
Grew  beautiful  beneath  his  touch," 

but  that  wealth  and  poverty  were  alike  made  to 
admit  the  superiority  of  mental  and  moral  "good" 
over  mere  worldly  "  goods."  The  expressions  of 
satisfaction  varied  with  the  grammatical  rather 
than  the  human  peculiarities  of  the  persons  who 
were  addressed.  "  What  a  grand,  inspiring,  and 
instructive  lecture  ! "  was  the  verdict  of  those  clad 
in  silk  and  broadcloth,  after  the  speaker  had  con- 
cluded. "  Them  's  idees,"  was  the  judgment  of  one 
hard-headed,  horny-handed  workman  in  home- 
spun, as  he  came  out  of  the  hall  by  the  side  of 
King. 

The  lecture  on  "  Socrates  "  attained  a  popularity 
nearly  as  great  as  that  on  "  Substance  and  Show." 
This  was  the  more  remarkable  because  the  sub- 
ject might  be  supposed  foreign  to  the  sympathies 
of  those  who  made  up  the  bulk  of  the  audience 
of  a  village  or  town  lyceum.  But  King,  though 
necessarily  not  a  profound  Greek  scholar,  was 
passionately  attracted  to  Plato  at  an  early  age, 
and  had  so  absorbed  Cousin's  French  translation 
of  that  great  master  in  p  ilosophy  that  he  ven- 
tured, when  he  had  hardly  attained  legal  man- 
hood, to  contribute  a  critical  exposition  of  Plato's 


xiv  Introduction. 

doctrine  of  immortality  to  the  "  Universalist  Re- 
view," and  in  the  course  of  it  to  question  the 
accuracy  and  the  insight  of  so  accomplished  a 
scholar  as  Professor  Andrews  Norton.  The 
figure  of  Socrates,  in  the  Platonic  dialogues,  had 
been  impressed  so  vividly  on  his  imagination,  that 
Socrates  at  last  became  to  him  as  actual  a  per- 
sonage as  any  acquaintance  he  daily  passed  in  the 
streets  of  Charlestown  or  Boston.  He  thought 
he  could  contrive  to  transfer  to  other  minds  the 
image  of  this  heathen  saint  and  sage  as  it  ex- 
isted, warm,  glowing,  and  lifelike,  in  his  own. 
His  success  was  complete.  Indeed,  the  lecture 
is  a  masterpiece  of  its  kind.  Scholarship  can 
doubtless  paint  a  finer  portrait  of  Socrates  ;  but 
to  naturalize  him,  morally  and  intellectually,  so 
as  to  make  him  a  sort  of  fellow-citizen  of  the 
honest  inhabitants  of  ordinary  American  towns 
and  villages,  is  a  task  which  mere  scholarship  is 
incompetent  to  perform  ;  yet  King  succeeded  in 
doing  this  difficult  work.  In  English  literature 
the  most  admirable  exposition  of  the  life,  char- 
acter, and  method  of  Socrates  is  doubtless  to  be 
found  in  Grote's  "  History  of  Greece" ;  but  no  Cape 
Cod  fisherman  or  Western  pioneer  could  have 
been  induced  to  read  Grote,  whereas  both  heard 
King  with  delight.  In  the  records  of  our  Ameri- 
can lyceums  there  is  probably  no  other  instance 
of  such  a  subject  being  made  universally  popular 
by  the  attractive  genius  of  the  speaker. 

The  lecture  on  "  Hildebrand  "  was  written  for  a 


Introduction.  xv 

special  occasion,  and  its  interest  was  not  tested 
by  being  repeated  before  miscellaneous  audi- 
ences. It  is  a  favorable  specimen  of  King's 
power  of  dealing  with  the  great  crises  and  char- 
acters of  ecclesiastical  history.  The  editor  had 
intended  to  include  in  this  volume  a  still  more 
elaborate  lecture  on  "Constahtine  and  his  Times"; 
but  the  publication  of  that,  as  well  as  of  two  ad- 
dresses on  the  "  Life  and  Writings  of  St.  Paul," 
is  reluctantly  postponed  for  the  present.  Indeed, 
an  editor  who  thoroughly  explores  the  mass  of 
manuscripts  which  Mr.  King  left  behind  him,  for 
the  purpose  of  selecting  a  few  for  publication, 
finds  his  task  all  the  more  difficult  on  account 
of  the  very  richness  of  the  materials.  He  knows 
what  he  would  like  to  print,  but  his  literary  con- 
science is  troubled  by  the  thought  of  those  which 
he  is  compelled  to  omit. 

Mr.  King  was  intensely  sensitive  to  the  in- 
fluences .  of  music,  though  he  had  no  tech- 
nical knowledge  of  it  as  a  science,  and  could  not 
read  its  language.  One  of  the  most  eloquent 
discourses  in  his  volume  of  sermons  is  that  on 
"The  Organ  and  its  Symbolism";  and  readers 
of  the  present  volume  cannot  fail  to  be  impressed 
by  the  address  on  "  Music,"  recording,  as  it  does, 
the  ideas  and  emotions  awakened  in  the  writer  by 
listening  to  the  works  of  the  great  composers. 
It  was  a  privilege  to  sit  near  him  when  a  work  of 
Handel,  Mozart,  or  Beethoven  was  performed  ; 
for  the  ecstasy  which  thrilled  his  own  frame 


xvi  Introduction. 

became  infectious,  and  one  enjoyed  the  double 
delight  of  hearing  the  music  and  of  participating 
in  the  rapture  of  a  companion  whose  soul  was  in 
most  delicious  accord  with  it. 

Five  of  the  lectures  in  the  present  volume  were 
written  and  delivered  in  California.  That  on 
"  Books  and  Reading  "  speaks  for  itself  as  one  of 
the  best  of  all  addresses  ever  delivered  on  a  topic 
which  has  seemingly  been  worn  threadbare  by 
the  efforts  equally  of  genius  and  mediocrity,  but 
which,  in  King's  hands,  comes  out  fresh  and 
new,  as  though  he  were  the  first  man  who  had 
ever  discoursed  about  it.  As  far  as  advice  on 
such  a  subject  is  ever  an  aid  to  intellectual  educa- 
tion, it  may  be  said  that  King  succeeded  in  his 
aim  ;  for  the  lecture  had  not  only  a  surprising  pop- 
ularity, but  numbers  of  his  hearers  really  adopted 
his  plan  of  reading,  and  doubtless  found  it  to  be 
of  much  practical  value.  The  other  four  lectures 
refer  more  or  less  to  the  Rebellion.  King,  while 
he  was  in  California,  could  no  more  keep  Jeffer- 
son Davis  and  the  secessionists  out  of  his  ser- 
mons and  addresses,  than  Dickens's  Mr.  Dick 
could  keep  Charles  the  First  out  of  his  "  Memo- 
rial." The  lecture  on  "Daniel  Webster"  was 
one  of  three  which  he  delivered  to  immense  audi- 
ences in  California  before  the  war  broke  out.  It 
is  now  printed,  not  for  its  literary  merit,  but  be- 
cause it  contains  many  felicitous  touches  of  char- 
acterization, unfolds  and  forecasts  the  principles 
on  which  the  impending  struggle  must  be  con- 


Introduction.  xvii 

ducted,  and  was  a  cause  of  much  irritation  to 
those  "  conservatives  "  who  could  not  openly  op- 
pose the  doctrines  of  such  an  apostle  of  conser- 
vatism as  Webster,  but  who  were  still  doubtful 
whether,  in  the  event  of  a  war,  they  should  cast 
their  fortunes  with  the  free  or  the  slave  States. 
The  lecture  was  written  in  headlong  haste,  and 
some  of  the  paragraphs  are  evidently  mere  notes 
of  what  the  lecturer  afterwards  expanded  in  the 
delivery ;  but  it  did  its  appointed  work  more 
effectually  than  if  it  had  been  a  perfect  specimen 
of  rhetoric ;  for  it  brought  into  the  discussion  the 
authoritative  name  of  Webster,  as  the  one  states- 
man of  the  country  who  had  not  only  crushed 
and  trampled  under  foot  all  the  sophisms  of  the 
most  redoubtable  logicians  of  disunion  and  of 
liberticide,  but  had  made  the  preservation  of  the 
Union  the  one  practical  object  and  supreme  ideal 
of  American  statesmanship.  King's  "Webster" 
was  not  only  denouncedby  politicians  in  news- 
papers, but  gently  rebuked  by  priests  in  the 
pulpit.  As  to  the  latter,  they  professed  to 
have  no  objection  to  the  eulogy  of  any  promi- 
nent statesman  of  the  past,  but  they  thought 
it  indecorous  to  apply  Webster's  principles  in  a 
satirical  and  offensive  way  to  the  problems  of  the 
present.  When  the  war  actually  burst  out,  King 
plainly  told  his  parishioners  that  his  religion  was 
identical  with  his  patriotism ;  and  he  referred,  in 
a  strain  of  bitter-sweet  eloquence,  to  the  theologi- 
cal rancor  which  had  ostracized  him  as  a  dis- 


xviii  Introduction. 

turber  of  the  public  peace,  because  he  had  fore- 
seen and  stated  those  perversions  of  constitutional 
law  which  alone  endangered  it. 

Up  to  the  time  of  Mr.  King's  death  it  was  gen- 
erally believed  that  he,  more  than  any  other  man, 
had  prevented  California  and  the  whole  Pacific 
coast  from  falling  into  the  gulf  of  disunion.  It  is 
certain  that  Abraham  Lincoln  held  this  opinion  ; 
and  it  was  an  opinion  which  the  President  shared 
with  thousands  of  prominent  men  in  all  sections 
of  the  country,  including  those  California  sympa- 
thizers with  the  South  who  were  most  vexed  by 
King's  opposition  to  their  schemes.  The  usual 
answer  to  this  general  impression  of  the  effect 
of  his  work  comes,  of  course,  from  patriots  who 
maintain  that  California  was  sound  for  the  Union 
from  the  first ;  that  King  merely  felt  the  pulse  of 
the  people,  and  gave  eloquent  expression  to  the 
general  sentiment  of  the  State.  But  in  fact  he  did 
not  merely  feel  the  people's  pulse  ;  he  gave  inces- 
santly an  zw-pulse  to  the  vague  Union  feeling,  and 
directed  it  to  a  definite  object.  Doubtless  a  large 
majority  of  the  population  were  Unionists.  Had  it 
been  otherwise,  it  would  not  have  been  necessary 
for  some  of  the  most  unscrupulous  politicians  of 
the  State  to  conceal  their  treasonable  designs  un- 
der patriotic  professions  of  loyalty.  Then  there 
was  a  large  body  of  honest  men  who  insisted  that 
the  war  should  be  conducted  on  principles  which 
would  insure  the  defeat  of  the  Union  armies. 
Miracles  are  now  banished  from  authentic  secular 


Introduction.  xix 

history ;  but  still  there  is  something  almost  mirac- 
ulous in  the  triumph  of  the  national  cause  against 
the  wrong-headiness  of  those  well-meaning  patriots 
who  contended  that  the  war  should  be  prosecuted 
on  the  constitutional  principles  which  Jefferson 
Davis  and  Alexander  Stephens  laid  down  for  the 
edification  and  guidance  of  Federal  statesmen  and 
generals.  The  leading  opponents  of  the  Consti- 
tution, armed  to  overturn  both  /'/  and  the  gov- 
ernment founded  on  it,  still  managed  to  steal  some 
time  from  their  conferences  with  foreign  powers, 
and  their  direction  of  military  operations,  to  in- 
struct the  loyal  people  as  to  the  proper  limitations 
of  their  power  in  putting  down  the  most  formida- 
ble of  all  rebellions  ;  and  there  is  something  comi- 
cal in  the  thought  that  these  admonitions  not  to. 
violate  the  provisions  of  the  Constitution  were 
keenly  felt,  not  merely  by  secret  traitors  in  the 
loyal  States,  but  by  a  large  body  of  Unionists  who 
were  eager  and  ready  to  sacrifice  life  and  property 
to  sustain  the  Union  and  the  Constitution. 

"  Pleased  to  the  last  they  cropped  the  flowery  food, 
And  licked  the  hands  just  raised  to  shed  their  blood." 

When  therefore  we  say  that  King  kept  California 
strong  for  the  Union,  we  do  not  mean  that  he  sim- 
ply was  the  eloquent  voice  through  which  the  gen- 
eral Union  sentiment  found  expression,  but  that 
he  guided  Union  opinion ;  that  he  both  anticipated 
and  defended  the  measures  which  eventually  made 
the  cause  of  the  Union  successful.  He  became  a 
power  in  California,  because  he  had  the  sagacity 


xx  Introduction. 

to  detect,  and  the  intrepidity  to  denounce,  the 
treason  that  skulked  under  loyal  phrases  and 
catchwords ;  and  his  influence  was  measured, 
not  by  his  bursts  of  declamatory  eloquence  on 
the  blessings  of  union,  but  by  the  skill  with  which 
he  took  the  people,  as  it  were,  out  of  the  hands 
of  disloyal  politicians,  and  induced  them  to  give 
their  vigorous  support  to  the  administration  of  the 
national  government. 

It  has  not  been  the  intention  of  the  editor  of 
this  volume  to  publish  any  lecture  which  specially 
represents  King's  deadly  animosity  to  the  enemies 
of  the  country  j  indeed,  it  has  now  become 
fashionable  to  speak  of  treason  as  an  amiable 
weakness  of  generous  and  susceptible  natures; 
but  the  reader  will  note  that  this  animosity 
bursts  forth  here  and  there  in  the  noble  lecture 
on  "The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts,"  and 
even  affords  the  occasion  for  a  sublime  image 
of  "the  earthquake  wave,"  in  the  college  ad- 
dress on  "  The  Intellectual  Duties  of  Students." 
The  grand  spirit  which  animates  the  oration  on 
"  The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism  "  will 
be  felt,  appreciated,  and  acknowledged  by  hun- 
dreds who  may  be  irked  by  the  relentless  assault 
made  in  it  on  the  old  aristocracy  of  Southern 
slaveholders.  But  King,  during  the  whole  period 
of  his  life  in  California,  was  so  penetrated, 
through  and  through,  with  the  sentiment  of  pa- 
triotism, that  his  hostility  to  the  enemies  of  the 
Union  and  the  Federal  government  broke  out, 


Introduction.  xxi 

not  merely  in  such  addresses  as  this  to  Union 
soldiers,  but  in  every  form  in  which  his  moral  and 
intellectual  activity  found  expression. 

Throughout  the  lectures  in  the  present  volume 
the  reader  can  hardly  fail  to  be  impressed  by 
King's  broad  humanity.  He  had  a  horror  of  all 
social  arrangements  which  tended  to  confirm 
sterile  and  stunted  natures  in  the  self-satisfaction 
they  derived  from  contemplating  their  own  little- 
ness of  soul.  He  ranked  men  and  women,  not 
according  to  their  social  position,  but  according 
to  their  place  in  the  ascending  scale  of  intellect 
and  virtue.  "  Think,"  he  says,  in  speaking  of  the 
future  life,  —  "  think  of  the  poor  exclusives  from 
this  sphere  carrying  their  petty  measures,  which 
limit  their  sympathies  on  earth,  into  the  world  of 
substance,  setting  up  their  little  coteries  to  cut 
Gabriel  if  he  did  not  belong  to  their  set,  or  ex- 
clude some  spirit  whose  brow  is  freighted  with 
truth,  if  he  was  not  born  quite  high  enough  to  suit 
their  fancy ! "  The  one  unmistakable  mark  of 
vulgarity  was,  in  his  view,  narrowness  of  mind 
and  insensibility  of  heart,  —  the  stupid  prejudice 
which  rails  at  ideas,  and  the  inhuman  selfishness 
which  scoffs  at  philanthropy. 

In  his  lectures,  as  in  his  sermons,  the  largeness, 
liberality,  and  humanity  of  his  disposition  found 
their  natural  expression  in  genial  breadth  of 
thought  and  beneficence  of  feeling.  Everything 
small  and  mean  was  as  abhorrent  to  his  soul  as 


xxii  Introduction. 

was  everything  base  and  cruel.  His  heart  and 
brain  agreed  in  instinctively  rejecting  whatever 
had  a  tendency  to  degrade  humanity,  and  in  in- 
stinctively admitting  whatever  was  calculated  to 
purify,  enrich,  elevate,  and  invigorate  it.  Through- 
out the  present  volume,  on  whatever  subject  he 
exercises  his  bright  and  joyous  faculties,  it  will 
ever  be  found  that  he  is  a  teacher  of  manliness 
as  well  as  of  godliness.  "  Circumstances,"  he 
says,  "  may  determine  how  much  show  a  man 
shall  make.  To  be  famous,  depends  on  some  for- 
tuities ;  to  be  a  president,  depends  on  the  acute 
smellers  of  a  few  politicians  and  a  mysterious  set 
of  wires  ;  to  be  rich,  depends  upon  birth  or  luck  ; 
to  be  intellectually  eminent,  may  depend  on  the 
appointment  of  Providence  ;  but  to  be  a  man,  in 
the  sense  of  substance,  depends  solely  on  one's 
own  noble  ambition  and  determination  to  live  in 
contact  with  God's  open  atmosphere  of  truth  and 
right,  from  which  all  true  manliness  is  inspired 
and  fed." 

And  again  he  says,  in  reference  to  the  three 
methods  of  observing  the  material  universe  which 
are  so  prominent  in  all  his  lectures  :  "  Out  of  three 
roots  grows  the  great  tree  of  nature, — truth,  beauty, 
good.  The  man  of  science  follows  up  its  mighty 
stem,  measures  it,  and  sees  its  branches  in  the 
silver-leaved  boughs  of  the  firmament.  The  poet 
delights  in  the  symmetry  of  its  strength,  the  grace 
of  its  arches,  the  flush  of  its  fruit.  Only  to  the 
man  with  finer  eye  than  both  is  the  secret  of  its 


Introduction.  xxiii 

glory  unveiled ;  for  his  vision  discerns  how  it  is 
fed  and  in  what  air  it  thrives.  To  him  it  is  only 
an  expansion  of  the  burning  bush  on  Horeb,  seen 
by  the  solemn  prophet,  glowing  continually  with 
the  presence  of  Infinite  Law  and  Love,  yet  remain- 
ing forever  unconsumed." 


L  i  i>  it  A  K  Y 

UNIVKKS1TY   OF 

CAi.IFOL.tNI' 


X 


SUBSTANCE  AND  SHOW;  OK,   FACTS  AND  FOECES, 

I  PROPOSE  to  speak  on  the  difference  be- 
tween substance  and  show,  or  the  distinction 
we  should  make  between  the  facts  of  the  world 
and  life,  and  the  causal  forces  which  lie  behind 
and  beneath  them.  No  mind  which  comprehends 
the  issues  involved  in  the  distinction  will  fail  to  see 
that  the  topic  is  vitally  practical ;  for  scepticism, 
or  mistaken  conceptions  of  the  truth  upon  this 
point,  must  degrade  our  whole  theory  of  life, 
demoralize  our  reverence,  and  make  the  region 
with  which  our  faith  should  be  in  constant  contact 
thin,  dreamy,  and  spectral. 

Most  persons,  doubtless,  if  you  place  before 
them  a  paving-stone  and  a  slip  of  paper  with  some 
writing  on  it,  would  not  hesitate  to  say  that  there 
is  as  much  more  substance  in  the  rock  than  in 
the  paper  as  there  is  heaviness.  *  Yet  they  might 
make  a  great  mistake.  Suppose  that  the  slip  of 
paper  contains  the  sentence,  "God  is  love"  ;  or, 
"Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself";  or, 
"  All  men  have  moral  rights  by  reason  of  heav- 
enly parentage,"  then  the  paper  represents  more 

I  A 


2  Substance  and  Show ; 

force  and  substance  than  the  stone.  Heaven  and 
earth  may  pass  away,  but  such  words  can  never 
die  out  or  become  less  real. 

The  word  "substance"  means  that  which  stands 
under  and  supports  anything  else.  Whatever  then 
creates,  upholds,  classifies  anything  which  our 
senses  behold,  though  we  cannot  handle,  see, 
taste,  or  smell  it,  is  more  substantial  than  the 
object  itself.  In  this  way  the  soul,  which  vivifies, 
moves, -and  supports  the  body,  is  a  more  potent 
substance  than  the  hard  bones  and  heavy  flesh 
which  it  vitalizes.  A  ten-pound  weight  falling  on 
your  head  affects  you  unpleasantly  as  substance, 
much  more  so  than  a  leaf  of  the  New  Testament, 
if  dropped  in  the  same  direction  ;  but  there  is  a 
way  in  which  a  page  of  the  New  Testament  may 
fall  upon  a  nation  and  split  it,  or  infuse  itself  into 
its  bulk  and  give  it  strength  and  permanence. 
We  should  be  careful,  therefore,  what  test  we 
adopt  in  order  to  decide  the  relative  stability  of 
things. 

There  is  a  very  general  tendency  to  deny  that 
ideal  forces  have  any  practical  power.  But  there 
have  been  several  thinkers  whose  scepticism  has 
an  opposite  direction.  "  We  cannot,"  they  say, 
"  attribute  external  reality  to  the  sensations  we 
feel."  We  need  not  wonder  that  this  theory  has 
failed  to  convince  the  unmetaphysical  common- 
sense  of  people  that  a  stone  post  is  merely  a  stub- 
born thought,  and  that  the  bite  of  a  dog  is  noth- 
ing but  an  acquaintance  with  a  pugnacious,  four- 


or.  Facts  and  Forces.  3 

footed  conception.  When  a  man  falls  down  stairs 
it  is  not  easy  to  convince  him  that  his  thought 
simply  tumbles  along  an  inclined  series  of  percep- 
tions and  comes  to  a  conclusion  that  breaks  his 
head  ;  least  of  all,  can  you  induce  a  man  to  be- 
lieve that  the  scolding  of  his  wife  is  nothing  but 
the  buzzing  of  his  own  waspish  thoughts,  and  her 
use  of  his  purse  only  the  loss  of  some  golden  fan- 
cies from  his  memory.  We  are  all  safe  against 
such  idealism  as  Bishop  Berkeley  reasoned  out  so 
logically.  Byron's  refutation  of  it  is  neat  and 
witty :  — 

"  When  Bishop  Berkeley  says  there  is  no  matter, 
It  is  no  matter  what  Bishop  Berkeley  says." 

And  yet,  by  more  satisfactory  evidence  than 
that  which  the  idealists  propose,  we  are  warned 
against  confounding  the  conception  of  substance 
with  matter,  and  confining  it  to  things  we  can  see 
and  grasp.  Science  steps  in  and  shows  us  that 
the  physical  system  of  things  leans  on  spirit.  We 
talk  of  the  world  of  matter,  but  there  is  no  such 
world.  Everything  about  us  is  a  mixture  or  mar- 
riage of  matter  and  spirit.  A  world  of  matter 
simply  would  be  a  huge  heap  of  sandy  atoms  or 
an  infinite  continent  of  stagnant  vapor.  There 
would  be  no  motion,  no  force,  no  form,  no  order, 
no  beauty,  in  the  universe  as  it  now  is ;  organization 
meets  us  at  every  step  and  wherever  we  look  ; 
organization  implies  spirit,  —  something  that  rules, 
disposes,  penetrates,  and  vivifies  matter. 

See  what  a  sermon  Astronomy  preaches  as  to 


4  Substance  and  Show  ; 

the  substantial  power  of  invisible  things.  If  the 
visible  universe  is  so  stupendous,  what  shall  we 
think  of  the  unseen  force  and  vitality  in  whose 
arms  all  its  splendors  rest?  It  is  no  gigantic  Atlas, 
as  the  Greeks  fancied,  that  upholds  the  celestial 
sphere ;  all  the  constellations  are  kept  from  fall- 
ing by  an  impalpable  energy  that  uses  no  muscles 
and  no  masonry.  The  ancient  mathematician, 
Archimedes,  once  said,  "Give  me  a  foot  of  ground 
outside  the  globe  to  stand  upon,  and  I  will  make 
a  lever  that  will  lift  the  world."  The  invisible 
lever  of  gravitation,  however,  without  any  fulcrum 
or  purchase,  does  lift  the  globe,  and  make  it  waltz 
too,  with  its  blond  lunar  partner,  twelve  hundred 
miles  a  minute  to  the  music  of  the  sun,  —  ay, 
and  heaves  sun  and  systems  and  milky- way  in 
majestic  cotillons  on  its  ethereal  floor. 

You  grasp  an  iron  ball,  and  call  it  hard  ;  it  is 
not  the  iron  that  is  hard,  but  cohesive  force  that 
packs  the  particles  of  metal  into  intense  socia- 
bility. Let  the  force  abate,  and  the  same  metal 
becomes  like  mush  ;  let  it  disappear,  and  the  ball 
is  a  heap  of  powder  which  your  breath  scatters  in 
the  air.  If  the  cohesive  energy  in  nature  should 
get  tired  and  unclench  its  grasp  of  matter,  our 
earth  —  to  use  an  expressive  New-England  phrase 
—  would  instantly  become  "  a  great  slump  "  ;  so 
that  what  we  tread  on  is  not  material  substance, 
but  matter  braced  up  by  a  spiritual  substance,  for 
which  it  serves  as  the  form  and  show. 

All  the  peculiarities  of  rock  and  glass,  diamond, 


ory  Facts  and  Forces.  5 

ice,  and  crystal  are  due  to  the  working  of  unseen 
military  forces  that  employ  themselves  under 
ground,  —  in  caverns,  beneath  rivers,  in  mountain 
crypts,  and  through  the  coldest  nights,  drilling 
companies  of  atoms  into  crystalline  battalions  and 
squares,  and  every  caprice  of  a  fantastic  order. 

When  we  turn  to  the  vegetable  kingdom,  is  not 
the  revelation  still  more  wonderful?  The  forms 
which  we  see  grow  out  of  substances  and  are  sup- 
ported by  forces  which  we  do  not  see.  The  stuff 
out  of  which  all  vegetable  appearances  are  made 
is  reducible  to  oxygen,  hydrogen,  carbon,  and  ni- 
trogen. How  does  it  happen  that  this  common 
stock  is  worked  up  in  such  different  ways  ?  Why 
is  a  lily  woven  out  of  it  in  one  place  and  a  dahlia 
in  another,  a  grape-vine  here,  and  a  honeysuckle 
there,  —  the  orange  in  Italy,  the  palm  in  Egypt, 
the  olive  in  Greece,  and  the  pine  in  Maine  ? 
Simply  because  a  subtile  force  of  a  peculiar  kind 
is  at  work  wherever  any  vegetable  structure  adorns 
the  ground,  and  takes  to  itself  its  favorite  robe. 
We  have  outgrown  the  charming  fancy  of  the 
Greeks  that  every  tree  has  its  Dryad  that  lives  in 
it,  animates  it,  and  dies  when  the  tree  withers. 
But  we  ought,  for  the  truth's  sake,  to  believe  that 
a  life-spirit  inhabits  every  flower  and  shrub,  and 
protects  it  against  the  prowling  forces  of  destruc- 
tion. Look  at  a  full-sized  oak,  the  rooted  Levia- 
than of  the  fields.  Judging  by  your  senses  and 
by  the  scales,  you  would  say  that  the  substance  of 
the  noble  tree  was  its  bulk  of  bark  and  bough  and 


6  Substance  and  Show; 

branch  and  leaves  and  sap,  the  cords  of  woody 
and  moist  matter  that  compose  it  and  make  it 
heavy.  But  really  its  substance  is  that  which 
makes  it  an  oak,  that  which  weaves  its  bark  and 
glues  it  to  the  stem,  and  wraps  its  rings  of  fresh 
wood  around  the  trunk  every  year,  and  pushes 
out  its  boughs  and  clothes  its  twigs  with  digestive 
leaves  and  sucks  up  nutriment  from  the  soil  con- 
tinually, and  makes  the  roots  clench  the  ground 
with  their  fibrous  fingers  as  a  purchase  against  the 
storm  wind,  and  at  last  holds  aloft  its  tons  of  matter 
against  the  constant  tug  and  wrath  of  gravitation, 
and  swings  its  Briarean  arms  in  triumph  over  the 
globe  and  in  defiance  of  the  gale.  Were  it  not  for 
this  energetic  essence  that  crouches  in  the  acorn 
and  stretches  its  limbs  every  year,  there  would  be 
no  oak  ;  the  matter  that  clothes  it  would  enjoy  its 
stupid  slumber;  and  when  the  forest  monarch 
stands  up  in  his  sinewy  lordliest  pride,  let  the 
pervading  life  power,  and  its  vassal  forces  that 
weigh  nothing  at  all,  be  annihilated,  and  the  whole 
structure  would  wither  in  a  second  to  inorganic 
dust.  So  every  gigantic  fact  in  nature  is  the  index 
and  vesture  of  a  gigantic  force.  Everything  which 
we  call  organization  that  spots  the  landscape  of 
nature  is  a  revelation  of  secret  force  that  has 
been  wedded  to  matter,  and  if  the  spiritual  powers 
that  have  thus  domesticated  themselves  around 
us  should  be  cancelled,  the  whole  planet  would 
be  a  huge  desert  of  Sahara,  —  a  black  sand-ball 
without  a  shrub,  a  grass-blade,  or  a  moss. 


or,  Facts  and  Forces.  7 

As  we  rise  in  the  scale  of  forces  towards  greater 
subtility  the  forces  become  more  important  and 
efficient.  Water  is  more  intimately  concerned 
with  life  than  rock,  air  higher  in  the  rank  of  ser- 
vice than  water,  electric  and  magnetic  agencies 
more  powerful  than  air,  and  light,  the  most  deli- 
cate, is  the  supreme  magician  of  all.  Just  think 
how  much  expenditure  of  mechanical  strength,  is 
necessary  to  water  a  city  in  the  hot  summer  months. 
What  pumping  and  tugging  and  wearisome  trudg- 
ing of  horses  with  the  great  sprinklers  over  the 
tedious  pavement !  But  see  with  what  beautiful 
and  noiseless  force  nature  waters  the  cities!  The 
sun  looks  steadily  on  the  ocean,  and  its  beams  lift 
lakes  of  water  into  the  air,  tossing  it  up  thousands 
of  feet  with  their  delicate  fingers,  and  carefully 
picking  every  grain  of  salt  from  it  before  they  let 
it  go.  No  granite  reservoirs  are  needed  to  hold  in 
the  Cochituates  and  Crotons  of  the  atmosphere, 
but  the  soft  outlines  of  the  clouds  hem  in  the  vast 
weight  of  the  upper  tides  that  are  to  cool  the 
globe,  and  the  winds  harness  themselves  as  steeds 
to  these  silken  caldrons  and  hurry  them  along 
through  space,  while  they  disburse  their  rivers  of 
moisture  from  their  great  height  so  lightly  that 
seldom  a  violet  is  crushed  by  the  rudeness  with 
which  the  stream  descends. 

Our  conceptions  of  strength  and  endurance  are 
so  associated  with  visible  implements  and  mechan- 
ical arrangements  that  it  is  hard  to  divorce  them, 
and  yet  the  stream  of  electric  fire  that  splits  an  ash 


8  Substance  and  Show ; 

is  not  a  ponderable  thing,  and  the  way  in  which 
the  loadstone  reaches  the  ten-pound  weight  and 
makes  it  jump  is  not  perceptible.  You  would 
think  the  man  had  pretty  good  molars  that  should 
gnaw  a  spike  like  a  stick  of  candy,  but  a  bottle  of 
innocent-looking  hydrogen  gas  will  chew  up  a  piece 
of  bar-iron  as  though  it  were  some  favorite  Cav- 
endish ;  and  Mr.  Faraday,  the  great  chemist,  claims 
to  have  demonstrated  that  each  drop  of  water  is 
the  sheath  of  electric  force  sufficient  to  charge  eight 
hundred  thousand  Leyden  jars.  In  spite  of  Maine 
liquor  laws,  therefore,  the  most  temperate  man  is 
a  pretty  hard  drinker,  for  he  is  compelled  to  slake 
his  thirst  with  a  condensed  thunder-storm.  The 
difference  in  power  between  a  woman's  scolding 
and  a  woman's  tears  is  explained  now.  Chemistry 
has  put  it  into  formulas.  When  a  lady  scolds  a 
man  has  to  face  only  a  few  puffs  of  articulate  car- 
bonic acid,  but  her  weeping  is  liquid  lightning. 

The  prominent  lesson  of  science  to  men,  there- 
fore, is  faith  in  the  intangible  and  invisible.  Shall 
we  talk  of  matter  as  the  great  reality  of  the  world, 
the  prominent  substance?  It  is  nothing  but  the 
battle-ground  of  terrific  forces.  Every  particle  of 
matter,  the  chemists  tell  us,  is  strained  up  to  its 
last  degree  of  endurance.  The  glistening  bead 
of  dew  from  which  the  daisy  gently  nurses  its 
strength,  and  which  a  sunbeam  may  dissipate,  is 
the  globular  compromise  of  antagonistic  powers 
that  would  shake  this  building  in  their  unchained 
rage.  And  so  every  atom  of  matter  is  the  slave 


or,  Facts  and  Forces.  9 

of  imperious  masters  that  never  let  it  alone.  It 
is  nursed  and  caressed,  next  bandied  about,  and 
soon  cuffed  and  kicked  by  its  invisible  overseers. 
Poor  atoms  !  no  abolition  societies  will  ever  free 
them  from  their  bondage,  no  colonization  move- 
ment waft  them  to  any  physical  Liberia.  For 
every  particle  of  matter  is  bound  by  eternal  fealty 
to  some  spiritual  lords,  to  be  pinched  by  one  and 
squeezed  by  another  and  torn  asunder  by  a  third ; 
now  to  be  painted  by  this  and  now  blistered  by 
that;  now  tormented  with  heat  and  soon  chilled 
with  cold  ;  hurried  from  the  Arctic  Circle  to  sweat 
at  the  Equator,  and  then  sent  on  an  errand  to  the 
Southern  Pole;  forced  through  transmigrations  of 
fish,  fowl,  and  flesh;  and,  if  in  some  corner  of  crea- 
tion the  poor  thing  finds  leisure  to  die,  searched 
out  and  whipped  to  life  again  and  kept  in  its  con- 
stant round. 

Thus  the  stuff  that  we  weigh,  handle,  and  tread 
upon  is  only  the  show  of  invisible  substances,  the 
facts  over  which  subtle  and  mighty  forces  rule. 

Next,  let  us  look  at  ideas  as  substantial  things. 
If  the  true  definition  of  substance  is  causal  and 
sustaining  force,  then  ideas  take  the  first  rank  as 
substances,  for  the  whole  universe  was  thought 
into  order  and  beauty.  The  word  was,  "  Let 
there  be  light,  and  there  was  light."  Nature  is 
the  language  and  imagery  of  Divine  ideas.  A 
Persian  poet  said  :  "  The  world  is  a  bud  from  the 
bower  of  his  beauty  ;  the  sun  is  a  spark  from  the 
light  of  his  wisdom  ;  the  sky  is  a  bubble  on  the 


io  Substance  and  Show  ; 

sea  of  his  power,"  A  row  of  types,  as  arranged 
by  a  compositor,  not  only  present  to  the  eye  cer- 
tain shapes,  colors,  and  other  sensible  qualities, 
but  also  intimate  to  the  mind  some  thought  that 
once  arose  in  a  human  intellect,  and  which  they 
have  been  selected  to  represent  to  others.  So  all 
the  objects  of  nature  constitute  a  hieroglyphic 
alphabet,  which  states  great  truths  and  senti- 
ments that  dwell  in  the  Infinite  intellect ;  with 
this  difference,  that  the  objects  of  nature  are  cre- 
ated and  upheld  by  the  idea  or  sentiment  which 
possesses  them.  They  would  fall  away  and  dis- 
solve if  the  eternal  truth  they  represent  should 
vanish,  just  as  the  body  would  crumble  if  the  soul 
should  leave  it.  Not  a  planet  that  wheels  its  circle 
around  its  controlling  flame,  not  a  sun  that  pours  its 
blaze  upon  the  black  ether,  not  one  of  all  the  con- 
stellated chandeliers  that  burn  in  the  dome  of 
heaven,  not  a  firmament  that  spots  the  robe  of 
space  with  a  fringe  of  light,  but  is  a  visible 
statement  of  a  conception,  wish,  or  purpose  in 
the  mind  of  God,  from  which  it  was  born,  and  to 
which  alone  it  owes  its  continuance  and  form. 
Jonathan  Edwards  imagined  that  the  Almighty 
creates  and  upholds  the  universe,  as  a  reflection 
on  a  mirror  is  caused  and  sustained  by  the  person 
or  object  that  stands  before  it.  The  rays  fall 
from  the  object  upon  the  mirror  every  moment, 
and  the  reflection  would  cease  as  soon  as  the 
object  should  remove ;  so,  he  conceived,  the  uni- 
verse is  the  continuous  image  of  the  Creator's 


or,  Facts  and  Forces.  1 1 

constant  thought,  and  would  change  instantly  if 
the  expression  of  his  purpose  varied,  and  would 
fade  from  space  if  his  ideas  should  be  dismissed. 
The  mind  cannot  entertain  a  more  sublime  thought 
than  this,  and  we  learn  from  it  that  the  man  who 
does  not  delight  in  the  beauty  of  the  universe,  and 
does  not  receive  into  his  soul  some  impressions 
of  the  meaning  of  nature,  has  no  contact  with  the 
world  of  Divine  Substance,  but  lives  in  a  vast 
baby-house  of  Show. 

Let  us  see,  next,  how  applicable  the  principle 
we  are  considering  is  to  the  world  of  man  and 
history.  All  the  shows  of  social  life  are  mani- 
festations of  a  secret  and  impalpable  substance. 
Every  house,  workshop,  church,  school-room, 
athenaeum,  theatre,  is  the  representative  of  an 
opinion.  What  the  eye  sees  of  them  is  built  of 
bricks,  iron,  wood,  and  mortar  by  carpenters, 
smiths,  and  masons  ;  but  the  seed  from  which 
they  grew  and  the  forces  by  which  they  are  up- 
held are  ideas,  affections,  conceptions  of  utility, 
sentiments  of  worship.  Strike  these  out  of  a 
people's  mind  and  heart,  and  its  homes,  temples, 
colleges,  and  art-rooms  fall  away,  like  the  trunk 
of  the  oak  when  its  life-power  is  smitten,  and  only 
the  bald,  sandy  surface  of  savage  life  remains. 

What  a  difference  it  would  make  in  the  physical 
and  moral  landscape  of  a  new  country,  whether  a 
race  of  Saxons  or  of  Turks  were  dropped  upon  it ! 
In  the  latter  case  the  timber  and  stone  are  slowly 
conjured  into  the  form  of  mosques  and  minarets, 


12  Substance  and  Show  ; 

Sultan's  palaces  and  harems,  and  the  various  fea- 
tures of  a  lazy  Moslem  civilization  ;  while  the 
coming  of  the  Saxon  genius  bids  the  forests  pre- 
pare to  be^hewn  for  homes  and  factories,  humble 
shrines  of  learning,  and  thickly  strewn  domes  for 
Sabbath  praise  and  prayer.  The  iron  can  no 
longer  sleep  in  its  hiding-places  ;  the  coal — the 
only  black  slave  whose  labor  the  white  man  may 
rightfully  impress  —  must  bring  its  hot  tempera- 
ment to  human  service  ;  the  streams  are  com- 
pelled to  pour  their  strength  upon  muscular  and 
busy  wheels,  that  weave  fabrics  of  comfort  and 
luxury ;  valleys  are  exalted,  and  mountains  bend 
their  necks  ;  steam  hurries  with  monstrous  bur- 
dens ;  magnetism  shoots  thoughts  along  its  slen- 
der veins  ;  mighty  piles  that  stand  for  justice,  law, 
and  equal  government  overlook  a  thousand  cities  ; 
and  the  white  wings  of  commerce,  vying  in  num- 
ber and  in  speed  with  the  pinions  of  the  sea-birds, 
flap  in  every  breeze  that  stirs  the  polar,  the  mod- 
erate, or  the  tropic  waves.  There  may  be  as 
many  men,  as  much  bodily  strength,  among  the 
Turks  as  with  the  Saxons ;  but  there  is  not  the 
spirit,  there  are  not  the  ideas,  to  make  the  fingers 
so  cunning  and  the  muscles  so  strong.  It  is  the 
hidden  spiritual  substance  in  the  Saxon  frames 
that  makes  their  bones  and  blood  its  purchase  and 
pulleys,  to  lift  up  the  myriad  structures  that  bear 
witness  to  Saxon  civilization.  All  that  we  see  in 
England  and  America,  so  different  from  what  Cal- 
cutta and  Canton  exhibit  to  the  eye,  is  the  cloth- 


or,  Facts  and  Forces.  13 

ing  and  show  of  different  ideas,  principles,  and 
sentiments  that  pervade  our  vigorous  blood. 

Thus,  each  nation  of  the  globe  is  a  huge  bat- 
tery of  spiritual  forces  to  which  each  individual 
contributes  something.  The  oneness  of  the  na- 
tion is  the  unity  of  the  galvanic  current  that  is 
generated  from  the  many  layers  of  metal  and  acid. 
And  the  question  of  the  superior  power  of  one 
nation  over  another  is  not  at  all  to  be  decided  by 
the  relative  numbers  of  population  and  armies, 
nor  by  the  forts,  guns,  and  magazines,  but  rather 
by  the  relative  mental  and  moral  energies  of  the 
lands.  France,  for  instance,  is  a  magnificent  in- 
carnation of  a  certain  temperament,  and  the  gen- 
erations that  rise  up  in  her  borders  continually 
supply  the  same  mental  and  social  forces,  thus 
giving  her  one  character  through  centuries.  Eng- 
land, moreover,  is  the  hive  of  very  different  pas- 
sions and  powers,  and  the  point  whether,  in  a 
long  war,  giving  each  side  money  enough,  Eng- 
land or  France  would  triumph,  is  reduced  to  the 
question  whether  the  effervescent  impulses  and 
military  enthusiasm  of  the  Celtic  blood  are  supe- 
rior, as  spiritual  qualities,  to  the  more  slow  and 
sullen  force,  the  cautious  but  persistent  resolution, 
and  the  tough  obstinacy  of  resistance  that  make 
up  the  power  of  an  Anglo-Saxon  army.  In  the 
great  campaigns  of  Wellington  in  Spain,  and  in 
the  conduct  of -the  struggle  at  Waterloo,  this  was 
the  real  strife,  —  a  wrestle  of  certain  spiritual 
qualities  with  each  other.  The  charge  of  the 


14  Substance  and  Show  ; 

French  under  Ney  or  Mural,  and  beneath  the  eye 
of  Napoleon,  was  the  gathering  roll  and  swing  of 
the  storm-waves  ;  whatever  was  movable  must 
fall  before  it ;  but  the  mind  and  the  resources  of 
Wellington  and  the  temper  of  the  men  who  served 
him  were  the  Saxon  rock  on  which  those  magnifi- 
cent Celtic  surges  swung  their  white  wrath  in  vain. 
Every  charge  of  Ney's  cavalry  against  Wellington's 
central  position  at  Waterloo  was  the  beat  of  a  fiery 
sensibility  against  a  stony  patience.  The  whole 
scene  was  less  a  contest  of  military  science  than 
a  visible  conflict  of  different  passions  and  a  thor- 
ough testing  of  their  strength.  It  was  the  old 
hypothesis,  in  dramatic  play,  of  an  irresistible  in 
contact  with  an  immovable.  The  irresistible  was 
spent ;  the  immovable  stood  fast. 

All  fighting  illustrates  the  same  law.  In  the 
old  Greek  days  Darius  could  oppose  a  hundred 
spears  to  each  one  of  Alexander's,  and  we  won- 
der that  the  Persians  were  so  easily  beaten.  The 
reason  is  that  the  fighting  in  the  young  Greek 
general's  army  was  done  by  spears  plus  brains, 
courage,  enthusiasm.  Discipline  in  a  battalion  is 
of  more  consequence  than  numbers,  because  it 
adds  a  spiritual  force  to  that  of  muscles ;  fervor 
is  often  found  superior  to  the  most  thorough  dis- 
cipline, for  fervor  is  a  higher  spiritual  force  and 
outweighs  the  weaker.  Bayonets  are  never  so 
sharp  and  terrible  in  the  hands  of  an  advancing 
line,  as  when  they  are  bayonets  that  think,  as  was 
the  case  in  our  own  Revolution;  and  there  are 


or. 


;  Facts  and  Forces.  1 5 


no  regiments  so  mighty  and  dangerous  as  those 
which  Cromwell  headed,  where  the  highest  spirit- 
ual qualities  were  drilled  into  the  ranks,  and  the 
bayonets  could  not  only  think,  but  pray. 

Thus,  in  all  cases,  a  nation  or  an  army,  so  far 
as  its  persons — all  that  we  can  see  of  it  —  are 
concerned,  is  only  a  show ;  the  substance  of  it  is 
the  ideas,  passions,  genius,  enthusiasm,  that  per- 
vade it,  and  are  not  seen. 

Our  doctrine  is  illustrated,  also,  by  the  fact  that 
the  power  of  a  nation  is  made  up,  in  part,  by  the 
generations  of  past  years,  whose  bodily  forms 
long  ago  mouldered  to  dust.  There  is  no  more 
beautiful  or  impressive  law  of  history  than  that 
by  which  the  past  genius,  heroism,  and  patriotic 
clevotedness  are  woven  into  the  structure  of  a 
people,  giving  it  character.  The  acts  and  spirit 
of  a  person's  former  years  are  not  lost,  but  are 
represented  in  the  face,  the  habits,  the  weakness, 
or  the  power  of  the  person's  mind  and  heart  to- 
day. In  the  same  way  a  state  has  a  personality 
that  endures  through  centuries  ;  all  its  great  men 
and  bad  men,  its  good  laws  and  vile  laws,  its 
faithfulness  and  its  crimes,  contribute  to  its  char- 
acter ;  nothing  dies  ;  but  what  was  fact  and  show 
in  a  living  generation  becomes  force  and  sub- 
stance when  the  actors  have  departed.  Look  at 
England,  for  instance.  Is  that  which  we  call 
England  composed  simply  of  twenty  millions  of 
men  and  women  that  inhabit  that  island  now? 
How  truly  do  the  statesmen,  patriots,  orators, 


1 6  Substance  and  Show  ; 

poets,  kings,  cabinets,  and  parties  of  several  hun- 
dred years,  belong  to  our  conception  of  what 
England  is  !  The  witness  of  their  activity  is  not 
only  prominent  in  the  literature  and  art,  the  cas- 
tles and  cathedrals,  the  palaces  and  towers,  the 
liberties  and  laws,  that  are  visible  on  the  English 
land  and  in  their  society,  but  an  incalculable 
force  has  been  shed  from  this  background  of 
greatness  and  genius  into  the  generation  of  to- 
day, and  through  the  present  will  be  transmitted 
into  the  future.  Let  a  hostile  cabinet  declare  war 
against  England,  and  try  to  tread  out  her  spirit 
and  influence,  and  they  would  find  that  a  force  is 
needed  competent  to  crush  twenty  generations. 
For,  though  the  merchants,  traders,  and  laborers 
little  think  of  it  in  time  of  peace,  and  perhaps 
care  not  half  a  fig  for  the  men  that  walked  through 
the  streets  they  tread,  two  centuries  ago,  Sidney, 
Russell,  Pym,  and  Hampden,  Newton,  and  Shake- 
speare, and  Chatham,  the  great  dead  of  West- 
minster Abbey,  and  the  honored  names  of  Oxford 
and  Cambridge,  still  stand  in  the  background, 
and  in  an  emergency  would  start  forward  and 
give  the  immense  momentum  of  their  spirit  to  an 
onset  against  an  invading  foe.  As  the  ghost  of 
the  hero  Theseus  appeared,  according  to  the 
Athenians,  on  the  field  of  Marathon,  and  inspir- 
ited their  ranks  against  the  Persians,  the  great- 
ness which  a  nation  has  enshrined  in  its  tradi- 
tions is  part  of  its  deepest  present  life ;  and  it 
often  happens  that  the  shades  of  the  fathers  are 


or,  Facts  and  Forces.  17 

a  more  substantial  rampart  for  a  land  than  the 
swords  of  the  children. 

See,  too,  how  our  revolutionary  experience, 
genius,  and  fidelity  are  involved  in  the  character 
of  America.  They  are  not  dead  facts  written  in 
mute  annals;  they  are  vital  memories  of  the 
nation,  as  though  the  same  men  that  are  now  on 
the  stage  had  once  performed  them.  We  take 
the  credit  of  that  wisdom,  persistence,  and  sacri- 
fice partly  to  ourselves ;  we  are  proud  of  them ; 
and  in  any  crisis  our  arms  would  be  the  stronger, 
our  wit  the  quicker,  our  fortitude  the  more  heroic, 
because  of  the  impulses  that  would  thrill  bur 
veins  from  the  beatings  of  that  revolutionary 
heart.  Strike  out  the  idea  of  America  and  the 
hope  of  America  from  our  people,  and  a  great 
portion  of  the  force  and  enthusiasm  of  our  people 
would  be  annihilated.  That  period  of  our  na- 
tional fortunes  is  far  more  than  a  show  in  our  his- 
tory ;  it  is  part  of  our  present  substance.  It  was 
not  a  fact  of  the  past  merely ;  it  is  a  force  of  our 
national  character. 

The  most  mournful  sight  in  the  case  of  any 
nation  is  the  evident  destitution  of  any  great  po- 
litical sentiments  and  principles  that  have  grown 
for  centuries,  and  are  rooted  in  its  heads,  habits, 
and  hearts.  What  a  sad  thing  that,  on  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  soil  of  France,  —  beautiful,  enthu- 
siastic France,  whose  genius  has  been  refining  for 
ages  like  the  wine  its  own  vineyards  distil, — no 
ideas  of  rights  and  constitutional  freedom  have 


1 8  Substance  and  Show  ; 

grown,  that  could  not  be  pulled  up  in  a  night 
by  a  dissolute  ruffian,  wearing  and  polluting  a 
splendid  name  !  Think  you  that  in  England  or 
here  any  cowardly  conspirator  could  weave  the 
noose  that  in  one  night  should  drag  down  the 
form  and  the  sentiment  of  Liberty  from  its  sacred 
niche  in  the  popular  affections,  and  the  next  day 
make  the  people  themselves  applaud  that  it  was 
done  so  well  ?  A  Bedouin  robber  might  as  well 
try  to  lasso  and  uproot  a  hickory-tree  that  had 
toughened  its  roots  in  the  ground  for  a  century. 
Poor  France  was  overgrown  with  the  merest 
weedy  sentiments  of  liberty ;  for  it  is  only  weeds 
that  bayonets  can  scratch  up. 

If  we  reflect  on  the  sources  of  national  power 
and  prosperity,  we  shall  soon  see  how  its  strength 
rests  on  an  invisible  and  ideal  base,  and  is  devel- 
oped out  of  mental  and  moral  resources.  Little 
Greece  resisted  the  flood  of  Persian  arms,  and  at 
last  conquered  the  East,  because  there  was  more 
vitality  —  more  courage,  genius,  enthusiasm  —  in 
her  people  than  in  the  swarming  myriads  which 
the  bulk  of  the  Persian  Empire  enclosed.  Rome, 
too,  rose  to  supreme  sway  by  the  despotic  influence 
of  character,  not  of  legions.  When  Rome  fell  she 
had  more  troops  and  fortifications  than  in  the 
height  of  her  republican  supremacy,  but  she  had 
lost  her  real  and  invisible  strength,  that  of  tem- 
perance, hardihood,  valor,  moral  soundness;  in- 
ternal dissension,  luxury,  and  bad  government  had 
unnerved  her  hands;  and  therefore  her  visible 


or,  Facts  and  Forces.  19 

defences  of  battalions  and  armaments  were  noth- 
ing but  empty  shell  and  show.  The  British  domin- 
ion is  supported  now  by  the  strong  fibres  of  Saxon 
wisdom  and  pride  that  run  through  the  whole 
extent  of  it.  It  is  those  that  knit  Calcutta  and 
Australia,  Gibraltar  and  Cape  Town,  to  London 
and  Liverpool  and  the  Parliament  House. 

The  most  effectual  way  to  paralyze  the  pros- 
perity of  our  country  at  this  moment  would  be 
to  smite  an  ideal  element  that  interpenetrates 
the  land.  The  soil  over  half  our  area  might  be 
blighted,  pestilence  might  decimate  our  laborers, 
tornadoes  might  scatter  a  great  portion  of  our 
tonnage  in  ruins  upon  the  sea,  droughts  might 
shrivel  the  rivers  into  thin  and  feeble  rills;  but 
all  this  would  be  less  disastrous  than  to  annihilate 
the  system  of  credit  that  pervades  the  mercantile 
world.  Destroy  that  impalpable  thing,  break  down 
the  confidence  between  city  and  country,  the  re- 
liance which  State  feels  upon  State  and  East  upon 
West,  the  trust  which  man  reposes  in  his  neighbor, 
and  it  is  the  same  as  if  you  arrest  the  pitch  of 
waterfalls,  and  smother  the  breezes  that  ruffle  the 
deep,  and  wilt  the  fierce  energy  of  steam,  and  un- 
string the  laborer's  arm,  and  quench  the  furnace- 
fires,  and  stop  the  hum  of  wheels,  and  forbid  emi- 
grants to  seek  the  West  and  cities  to  rise  amid  the 
silence  of  its  woods.  Our  prosperity  and  our  hopes 
lean  back  on  that  moral  bond  more  than  they  do 
on  nature  or  on  capital ;  shake  it,  and  there  is  an 
earthquake  of  society ;  restore  it,  and  order,  activ- 
ity, happiness,  and  wealth  return. 


2O  Substance  and  Show  ; 

As  a  bond  of  union  for  our  States,  moreover, 
there  is  one  element  more  substantial  than  even 
the  wisdom  of  our  Constitution,  the  interlocked 
geographical  unity  of  our  territory,  and  the  power 
of  our  central  government.  It  is  our  common 
memories  of  a  great  history,  and  the  one  language 
that  is  spoken  in  all  our  zones  and  over  all  the 
breadth  of  the  lines  of  longitude,  that  mark  the 
leagues  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  shores. 
It  is  hardly  possible  that  any  wisdom  of  political 
structure  or  administration  could  hold  so  many 
States  together  against  such  diversities  of  social 
customs,  intelligence,  and  interest,  if  the  different 
districts  of  our  empire  spoke  different  languages. 
But  our  unity  of  speech,  —  the  common  way  in 
which  we  articulate  our  breath  and  write  our 
thoughts,  enabling  the  farthest  backwoodsman  to 
feel  kindred  with  the  culture  of  the  East,  making 
all  commercial  correspondence  simple  and  easy, 
allowing  us  to  read  the  same  books,  to  read  the 
same  speeches  with  common  delight  in  a  common 
eloquence,  —  this  is  like  a  soul  breathed  through 
all  the  limbs  of  our  confederacy,  giving  it  a 
stronger  unity  than  its  geological  skeleton  or  its 
political  muscles  can.  Destroy  this  community 
of  language,  give  a  distinct  tongue  to  each  great 
division  of  our  land,  introduce  confusion  of  dia- 
lects into  our  capital,  and  we  could  have  no  more 
permanent  unity  than  the  mechanical  one  which 
Nebuchadnezzar's  image  had,  with  its  head  of 
gold,  its  breast  of  silver,  its  thighs  of  brass,  its 


or,  Facts  and  Forces.  21 

legs  of  iron,  and  its  feet  of  clay.  Its  parts  might 
be  dislodged  from  each  other.  There  would  not 
be  invisible  unity  to  mould  into  vital  permanence 
its  unity  of  show. 

The  politicians  every  now  and  then  get  up  their 
schemes  of  division,  but  the  common  mother 
.tongue  drowns  them  before  they  swim  far.  As 
long  as  the  free  soil  and  the  Hunker  speeches  in 
Congress  are  made  in  the  same  dialect  the  danger 
of  their  antagonism  is  greatly  abated.  Only  the 
old  mother  tongue  does  try  to  tell  us,  through  the 
dictionaries,  that  the  word  "slave"  is  not  Saxon. 
It  came  into  our  speech  by  foreign  immigration ; 
it  cannot  show  any  naturalization  papers,  the  Con- 
stitution rejected  it,  and  so  certainly,  according 
to  the  present  tendencies  of  party,  it  ought  not  to 
be  allowed  to  gain  power  and  office  over  the  good 
native  American  noun  "freedom." 

I  have  several  times  used  the  word  "civilization" 
in  connection  with  the  subject  we  are  considering. 
Let  us  see  now  what  light  the  meaning  of  that 
word  sheds  upon  our  theme.  There  are  a  vast 
number  of  things  that  make  up  civilization.  They 
are  invisible,  but  they  are  among  the  most  sub- 
stantial and  potent  realities  connected  with  our 
globe. 

Besides  the  men  and  women,  the  houses  and 
wealth,  that  exist  in  Christendom,  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  civilization,  which  has  been  growing 
steadily,  and  which  lives  on  while  the  generations 
die.  There  is  government  in  the  civilized  world, 


22  Substance  and  Show  ; 

there  are  reverences,  laws,  manners  and  habits, 
tastes  and  principles,  and  all  these  make  up  the 
structure  of  society.     Just  as  the  surface  of  the 
globe  is  composed  of  various  layers  of  clay,  sand- 
stone, slate,  and  granite,  which  successive  geologi- 
cal epochs  deposited,  and  the  united  strength  of 
which  uphold  our  soil  and  support  our  steps,  the 
moral  world  is  constructed  of  strata  of  laws,  cus- 
toms,   opinions,    truths,    discoveries,    sentiments, 
which  successive  races  and  generations  have  de- 
posited, and  which  our  souls  live  upon  now.    The 
best  life  of  the  nations  that  are  gone  is  still  in  our 
civilization.     Influences  from  the  Old  Testament, 
from  Grecian  literature  and  character,  from  Roman 
heroism   and   law,   are   steadily  poured   into  our 
moral  life  from  countless  churches  and  colleges, 
although  the  Hebrew  State,  the  Greek  Republics, 
and  the  Roman  Empire  have  been  buried  for  cen- 
turies.    And  so  from  the  German  barbarians  of 
the    Northern  forests,  from  the  feudal  customs, 
from  the  Crusades,  from  the  Catholic  church  in  its 
ripe  power  and  glory,  from  the  life  of  Socrates 
and  the  intellect  of  Augustine,  from  the  speech 
of  Paul  on  Mars  Hill  and  the  thinking  of  John 
Huss,  from  what  Bacon  wrote  and  Shakespeare 
imagined  and  Faust  invented  and  Newton  discov- 
ered and  Fulton  devised ;  in  short,  from  all  the 
victories  of  heroes  and  the  blood-sealed  fidelity 
of  martyrs  and  the  holy  achievements  of  saints 
some  contributions  have  been  made  to  that  pro- 
gressive reality  we  call  civilization,  and  they  all 


or,  Facts  and  Forces.  23 

exist  around  us  now  as  beneficent  forces  that  en- 
noble our  lives  with  privileges  and  a  value  which 
cannot  be  estimated.  Your  father  may  not  have 
left  you  any  legacy  of  houses  and  stock,  but  the 
whole  past  is  your  mental  and  moral  father,  and 
that  leaves  to  every  one  of  us  an  inheritance 
which  it  would  be  a  miserable  bargain  for  us  to 
sell  for  a  fortune  of  millions  on  condition  of  being 
disentangled  from  the  civilized  life  of  the  race. 

The  poorest  man  in  this  neighborhood  is  im- 
mensely rich,  so  far  as  attaining  the  great  objects 
of  life  is  concerned,  especially  if  he  has  a  family, 
compared  with  what  his  poverty  would  be  if  he 
could  own  a  hundred  square  miles  of  original  na- 
ture, and  must  live  on  it  alone  with  his  family,  cut 
off  from  all  privileges  of  society  and  with  the 
wealth  of  civilized  influence  forever  cancelled 
from  his  brain  and  breast. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  substance  of  the  past  lives 
on  nnd  is  vitally  present  with  us  now.  All  that  is 
visible  of  a  nation  dies,  but  its  soul  survives  ;  the 
truth  it  discovered  and  illustrated  is  preserved  ; 
its  essence  passes  into  civilization,  improves  so- 
ciety, and  becomes  the  common  property  of  after 
times. 

In  the  old  furniture-shops  of  Boston  you  can 
buy  chairs  and  tables  that  came  out  of  the  May- 
flower to  an  extent  that  would  load  a  fleet.  How- 
ever much  humbug  there  may  be  about  this,  thank 
Heaven  the  spiritual  cargo  that  was  packed  into 
that  little  hull  is  not  all  unloaded  yet.  New  Eng- 


24  Substance  and  Show ; 

land  liberty  and  thrift  have  been  disembarked 
from  it ;  half  of  New  York  and  Ohio  and  Illinois 
and  Wisconsin  have  been  heaved  out  of  its  hold 
by  invisible  stevedores  ;  and  there  is  enough  left 
yet  to  set  up  good  Constitutions  in  the  farther 
slopes  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  make  Kansas 
free. 

Think  for  a  moment,  too,  of  the  order  in  a 
great  city,  and  how  it  is  preserved.  What  pas- 
sions are  boiling  in  London  and  Boston  and  the 
streets  of  New  York  !  And  how  is  it  that  we  are 
kept  from  conspiracies  and  mobs  and  devastations 
of  license  ?  How  is  it  that  the  spirit  of  our  social 
life  is  higher  in  respect  of  peace  than  the  aggre- 
gate of  individual  lives,  which  is  the  splendid 
mystery  of  civilization  ?  It  is  not  by  direct  and 
visible  pressure  of  resisting  force,  but  by  the  fine 
network  of  interests,  opinions,  reverences,  feelings 
of  honor  and  shame,  fears  and  loves,  disposed 
over  the  community,  which  hold  the  brutal  ele- 
ments of  our  nature  in  check,  as  Gulliver  was 
made  prisoner  by  the  threads  which  the  cunning 
Lilliputians  wove  over  his  bod)7,  and.  one  of  which 
they  fastened  to  each  of  his  hairs. 

Does  any  man  say  that  the  laws,  the  courts 
and  sheriffs,  uphold  our  order?  Plainly  the  sanc- 
tity of  the  laws  does  not  consist  in  their  enact- 
ments by  legislatures,  or  their  preservation  in 
sheep-skin  binding  (a  style  of  binding,  by  the 
way,  which  many  of  our  laws  had  when  they  were 
yet  in  the  brains  of  their  authors).  Sentiments 


or.  Facts  and  Forces.  25 

and  principles  in  the  people,  faith   and  loyalty, 
varnish  the  laws  with  their  real  majesty. 

Once  in  a  while  a  great  officer  of  the  law  comes 
along,  like  the  venerable  Hays,  so  famous  in  Bos- 
ton, who  stands  forth  as  a  physical  Napoleon  of 
police.  It  is  not  by  his  personal  finite  genius 
that  he  wears  such  terror.  But  he  is  a  good  con- 
ductor of  the  respect  for  law  which  is  latent  in 
the  community.  His  frame  is  electric  with  the 
potency  of  civil  authority  everywhere.  We  had 
a  marshal  in  Boston  lately  that  sometimes  ap- 
peared on  a  Saturday  night  in  a  circle  of  gamblers, 
and  though  he  was  but  one  man  among  a  score  or 
two,  he  changed  the  game  very  quick,  and  he  in- 
fused a  sudden  passion  for  a  different  shuffle  and 
cut  than  any  laid  down  in  Hoyle.  The  play  shifted 
by  magic  from  whist  and  loo  to  leap-frog  and  all- 
fours,  because  a  worthy  embodiment  of  social  law, 
invested  with  the  moral  force  of  civilization,  ap- 
palled and  scattered  them.  When  the  lightning 
strikes  a  tree  there  is  a  stream  of  electricity  from 
the  ground  that  conspires  with  the  flame  from 
heaven  to  complete  the  bolt,  else  it  is  harmless  ; 
and  so  the  law  in  the  guilty  men  leaps  out  and 
combines  with  the  electric  flash  from  every  great 
officer's  form,  to  do  the  work  of  moral  paralysis. 
There  was  great  wisdom  sententiously  expressed 
in  the  exclamation  of  a  little  constable  I  heard  of 
once  who  went  to  arrest  a  burly  offender  against 
the  statutes,  and  was  threatened  with  a  shaking  if 
he  did  not "  clear  out."  If  it  had  been  a  matter  of 


26  Substance  and  Show; 

fists  and  muscles,  the  majesty  of  the  law  would 
have  been  miserably  bruised.  But  the  intrepid 
little  officer  responded  :  "  Do  it  if  you  please  • 
only  remember,  if  you  shake  me  you  shake  the 
whole  State  of  Massachusetts." 

The  substance  of  power  is  that  which  sways 
the  minds  and  hearts  of  the  people  ;  all  else  is 
the  show  of  it.  And  so  the  highest  badge  of 
civic  authority  now  is  not  the  sceptre  of  a  king, 
not  the  dress  of  a  president,  not  the  uniform  of  a 
general,  but  the  pole  of  a  constable.  The  English 
or  Yankee  policeman  wears  a  badge  which  so- 
ciety spontaneously  respects,  which  innocence  and 
weakness  instinctively  rejoice  in,  which  guilt  and 
knavery  instinctively  fear.  What  is  the  authority 
of  Nicholas  the  Czar,  or  Louis  Napoleon  in  his 
rocking-chair  of  bayonets  ?  (may  every  point  of 
them  prick  the  tanned  hide  of  his  conscience  yet !) 
—  what  are  they  but  imperial  bullies  with  military 
bull-dogs  to  keep  the  wrath  of  the  human  race  at 
bay  ?  Mr.  Bumble  the  beadle  sits  on  the  throne 
of  civil  power  ;  to  him  the  human  race  goes  down 
with  honest  awe  upon  its  knees. 

Surely  this  nation  could  better  afford  to  part 
with  its 'armies  and  navy,  its  forts,  guns,  maga- 
zines, and  military  science,  than  to  have  an  abate- 
ment of  one  per  cent  from  the  regard  which  the 
people  have  for  the  forms  of  a  town-meeting, 
their  deep  reverence  for  the  statutes,  their  quick 
submission  to  a  writ,  their  dread  of  mobs,  their 
love  of  home,  and  the  awe  that  attends  the  hear- 


or,  Facts  and  Forces.  27 

ing  a  sentence  of  death  from  a  judge.  In  the 
first  case  the  country  would  lose  some  visible  facts 
which  represent  its  strength,  and  which  might  be 
replenished  by  taxation  ;  in  the  latter  case  it  would 
part  with  forces,  inherited  from  past  ages,  which 
are  its  strength,  and  by  which  it  is  swung  over  the 
abyss  of  lawlessness,  as  the  globe  is  hurried  over 
the  black  depths  of  space  by  the  threads  of  gravi- 
tation that  are  more  subtle  than  sunbeams. 

Finally,  character  is  one  of  the  prominent  sub- 
stances of  the  world,  that  is,  it  is  one  of  the  things 
which  do  the  most  as  causes  to  uphold  society 
and  quicken  it.  Character,  in  the  sense  of  great 
personal  energy,  changes  the  face  of  nature,  digs 
mines,  builds  railroads,  levels  mountains,  founds 
cities,  evokes  factories,  dwarfs  the  oceans  to  con- 
venient ponds.  And  in  higher  senses,  we  cannot 
tell  what  impress  one  original  soul  like  David's, 
so  splendid  in  genius,  so  sensitive  to  every  breath 
of  circumstance,  so  sincere  in  his  piety,  his  sin, 
and  his  terrible  remorse,  leaves  on  the  fortunes  of 
after  generations.  His  great  heart  has  been  an 
electric  battery  to  the  bosoms  of  countless  millions 
of  whom  he  never  dreamed.  Who  of  us  is  acute 
enough  to  untwist  the  whole  of  our  debt  to  the 
burly  substance  of  Martin  Luther's  spirit  ?  Strike 
him  out  of  the  last  three  centuries,  and  you  tear 
out  the  very  spine  of  our  liberties  and  mechanical 
arts  ;  our  railroads  and  steamships,  and  most  of 
the  material  forces  of  Protestant  civilization  are 
rent  away  with  him,  for  they  radiate  from  his 


28  Substance  and  Show ; 

rough  generic  thought.  The  Duke  of  Wellington 
assented  to  the  estimate  which  somebody  made, 
that  the  presence  of  Napoleon  on  the  field  was 
equal  to  forty  thousand  men.  See,  too,  what 
the  character  of  the  Puritans  is  doing  for  New 
England  at  this  moment.  It  gives  it  a  firmer  basis 
than  its  granite  strata.  It  is  the  stamina  of  the 
present  virtue  of  those  States.  It  has  built  and 
reared  their  colleges  and  schools.  It  is  the  vigor 
of  their  intelligence  and  the  sinew  of  their  piety, 
and  thus  is  a  substantial  benefit  after  the  bodily 
forms  that  once  housed  it  are  crumbled.  And 
advert,  for  a  moment,  to  what  the  character  of. 
Washington  has  done,  and  will  yet  do,  for  Amer- 
ica and  freedom.  Better  for  our  country  in  the 
crisis  of  its  history  to  have  lost  its  collected  treas- 
ures, to  have  parted  with  half  its  territory  and 
half  its  citizens,  than  to  have  been  robbed  of  the 
heart  of  Washington.  His  soldiers  derived  cour- 
age, faith,  and  food  from  his  serene  and  hopeful 
majesty,  and  during  that  terrible  winter  at  Valley 
Forge  the  nourishment  of  future  ages  was  in  the 
continuance  of  the  resources  in  that  one  breast. 
His  character  is  part  of  this  Western  World  for- 
ever, as  much  part  of  it  as  our  forests  and  our  rocks. 
So  there  is  an  ascending  series  of  creative  and 
substantial  forces,  beginning  with  mechanical 
energies  and  running  up  through  chemical  affin- 
ities, vital  powers,  perception,  will,  ideas,  to  per- 
sonality. We  often  use  the  expression  with  regard 
to  a  person  in  society,  that  "  he  is  a  man  of  sub- 


or,  Facts  and  Forces.  29 

stance."  Generally  this  phrase  conveys  the  idea 
that  a  man  has  acquired  some  property.  It  would 
be  very  applicable  if  it  stood  for  the  "  real  estate  " 
which  a  man  has  amassed,  —  that  is,  for  his  per- 
sonal estate  of  great  qualities,  forces  of  genius, 
learning,  truth,  moral  power,  and  influence.  For 
it  happens  that,  in  the  supreme  realm  of  which  we 
are  citizens,  and  where  the  eternal  laws  tax  and 
weigh  us,  our  personal  estate,  that  is,  what  we  are, 
is  our  real  estate.  How  absurd  to  use  the  word 
"substance"  of  a  man,  and  make  it  signify  a  house, 
bank-stock,  a  heap  of  guineas,  a  store  full  of  mer- 
.chandise  ;  things  that  do  not  touch  his  humanity 
at  all.  He  is  the  man  of  substance  that  has  the 
noble  qualities  which  belong  to  human  nature 
packed  into  him,  and  that  can  stand  up,  strong 
and  solid,  if  all  the  accidents,  such  as  fame,  posi- 
tion, money,  worldly  consideration,  are  stripped 
away.  It  would  be  just  as  sensible  to  take  a  man 
in  the  last  stages  of  consumption,  —  a  weak  and 
wasted  frame  of  bones,  —  and  after  getting  a  tailor 
to  dress  him  up  and  pad  him  out  large  with  batting, 
to  call  him  a  man  of  physical  substance,  as  to  use 
that  phrase  of  persons  that  only  have  a  market 
control  over  some  dollars,  and  are  destitute  of  the 
forces  and  resources  that  belong  to  a  mind,  heart, 
and  soul.  Your  Herschel  and  Newton  are  men 
of  intellectual  substance,  Fenelon  and  Wesley  of 
spiritual  substance,  Wilberforce  of  moral  sub- 
stance, Luther  of  heroic  substance,  Howard  of 
affectional  substance  ;  and  if  we  are  lean  in  these 


3O  Substance  and  Show  ; 

qualities,  we  are  shadows,  and  all  the  bricks  and 
mortar,  land-deeds,  certificates,  and  doubloons,  in 
London  cannot  redeem  us  from  being  thinner  than 
mush,  —  a  body-load  of  mist  and  fog. 

Character  is  the  culminating  substance  of  na- 
ture ;  and  we  may  say  here  that  a  man  may  be 
what  he  pleases  to  be.  The  forms  of  our  activity 
are  prescribed  for  us  by  nature,  but  circumstances 
do  not  make  the  real,  central  man.  Circumstances 
often  determine  how  much  show  a  man  shall 
make.  To  be  famous  depends  on  some  fortuities ;' 
to  be  a  president  depends  on  the  acute  smellers  of 
a  few  politicians  and  a  mysterious  set  of  wires  ;. 
to  be  rich  depends  on  birth  or  luck  ;  to  be  intel- 
lectually eminent  may  depend  on  the  appointment 
of  Providence  ;  but  to  be  a  man,  in  the  sense  of 
substance,  depends  solely  on  one's  own  noble 
ambition  and  determination  to  live  in  contact  with 
God's  open  atmosphere  of  truth  and  right,  from 
which  all  true  manliness  is  inspired  and  fed.  We 
often  talk  about  ghosts,  and  wonder,  sometimes, 
at  our  winter  firesides  whether  any  ghost  has  ever 
returned  from  the  regions  of  the  dead.  For  one, 
I  am  content  to  leave  that  question  of  revisits  to  be 
decided  by  Mrs.  Crowe's  "  Night  Side  of  Nature  " 
and  the  vast  and  increasing  crowd  of  spiritual 
rappers,  who  are  able  to  make  any  luckless  spirit 
beat  a  tattoo  on  smooth  walnut  or  mahogany. 

Now,  the  answer  we  should  give  if  anybody 
should  ask  us  if  we  had  ever  seen  a  ghost  will 
depend  wholly  on  our  standard  of  what  a  ghost 


or.;  Facts  and  Forces.  31 

is.  Some  men  would  not  be  satisfied  unless  they 
could  shoot  a  bullet  through  him  without  injuring 
any  intestines.  Another  would  want  to  strike  a 
club  at  him,  and  have  it  pass  through  as  though  it 
were  six  feet  of  moonshine.  In  Dickens's  "  Christ- 
mas Carol "  the  old  miser  was  satisfied  he  beheld 
his  dead  partners  ghost,  when  he  looked  right 
through  his  stomach  and  saw  the  buttons  on  the 
back  of  his  coat.  Any  test  which  would  prove 
that  an  unfortunate  being  had  no  body  would 
•satisfy  most  persons  of  its  claim  to  ghostship.  By 
any  such  standards  we  must  probably  give  up  the 
honor  of  having  seen  a  ghost.  And  yet  the  world 
is  plentifully  spotted  with  apparitions  ;  they  are 
all  about  us,  in  the  streets  and  the  stalls  and  the 
stores ;  they  are  in  the  Congress  rooms,  and 
editors'  chairs,  and  pulpits,  transacting  a  great 
deal  of  the  business  of  the  world,  —  not  revisitants 
of  the  earth,  because  they  have  never  left  it,  but 
shows  of  people,  human  haze  and  ghastliness, 
without  the  substance  of  energy,  virtue,  truth,  to 
fill  out  the  plain  promise  of  their  clothes.  For  our 
popular  definition  of  a  ghost  is  just  the  reverse  of 
the  truth  ;  it  makes  one  consist  of  a  soul  without  a 
body,  while  really  a  spectre,  an  illusion,  a  hum- 
bug of  the  eyesight  and  the  touch,  is  a  human 
body  not  'vitalized  through  and  through  with  a 
soul. 

When  a  person  has  only  money  to  support  his 
claim  to  substance,  his  highest  nature  is  made  up 
of  mortgages  and  rent-rolls,  notes  and  titles,  —  a 


32  Substance  and  Show; 

+ 

man  of  bank  paper,  not  of  realities,  —  and  a  com- 
mercial revolution  would  tear  him  up.  Some 
men's  claim  to  substance  depends  on  a  large 
stock  of  calicoes  ;  and  a  fall  in  J:he  thermometer 
of  trade  reduces  them  to  zero.  -Where  station  is 
the  sole  basis  of  that  claim,  the  person's  soul  is  a 
great  bladder  blown  up'  by  popular  breath,  and 
a  pin-hole  of  accident  will  make  him  collapse. 
But  of  all  those  classes  which  the  world  puts  for- 
ward as  its  darlings,  the  dandy  is  the  most  re- 
moved from  the  domain  of  real  qualities  and 
takes  first  rank  as  a  ghost,  since  he  is  "  a  whis- 
kered essence  and  an  organized  perfume." 

The  climax  of  my  purpose  in  this  address  will 
be  gained  if  it  will  lead  any  of  you  to  see  that 
the  stuff  a  great  soul  is  made  of  is  the  most  real 
and  unwasting  material  of  the  universe,  —  some- 
thing which  moth  and  rust  cannot  corrupt,  nor 
death  with  the  tooth  of  its  savage  chemistry  im- 
pair. As  men  walk  the  streets  they  seem  about 
alike  ;  the  differences  they  show  seem  to  be  the 
difference  of  height,  weight,  complexion,  and 
clothes.  But  it  is  not  so.  As  you  stand  at  a 
little  distance  from  this  metropolis,  upon  a  hill 
that  commands  its  avenues  and  circuit,  you  see 
of  what  various  buildings,  differing  widely  in  cost 
and  splendor,  its  beautiful  panorama  is  composed. 
And  so  would  its  human  inhabitants  seem,  if  you 
could  stand  on  some  spiritual  eminence  and  see 
the  realities  which  their  fleshly  tenement  conceal. 
....  Thence  would  we  see  the  churches  of  our 


or,  Facts  and  Forces.  33 

spiritual  city ;  and  over  them,  kindred  but  su- 
perior, with  more  intricate  grace  and  capacious 
measure,  the  cathedral  spirits,  like  such  as  Chan- 
ning,  whose  voices,  are  bells  that  call  to  worship, 
and  whose  thoughts,  like  spires,  are  always  lifted 
above  the  world,  conversing  with  light  and  God, 
rebuking  the  vanity  of  the  earth,  and  shedding 
over  all  below  the  promise  of  immortality. 

1851. 


(  LIBK 

Ui*l  VKKS1TY 

CAL1FOKNIA. 

X=  s 


II. 

THE  LAWS  OF  DISORDER, 

UNTIL  a  more  accurate  and  luminous  for- 
mula suggests  itself,  I  must  announce  the 
address  which  it  is  my  privilege  to  offer  you, 
under  the  paradoxical  and  vague  title  of  "  The 
Laws  of  Disorder.".  Let  me  hope  that  the  illus- 
trations to  be  brought  forward  will  sufficiently  in- 
terpret the  fundamental  purpose  of  the  lecture, — 
which  is  to  show  how  laws  wind  into  regions  of 
nature  and  society  that  we  never  conceive  of  as 
subject  to  a  plan  and  a  purpose,  but  rather  as  cha- 
otic, or,  at  any  rate,  at  loose  ends. 

If  a  die  should  be  thrown  a  million  times,  it 
would  turn  out  that  aces,  trays,  sixes,  would  ap- 
pear in  about  equal  proportions.  The  result  of 
each  throw  would  be  uncertain  enough,  but  a 
man  might  stake  his  estate  on  the  ratio  of  deuces 
or  sixes  in  the  million  casts  with  less  risk  of  loss 
than  most  of  the  lines  of  business  are  attended 
with.  This  fact,  drawn  from  the  logic  of  chances, 
furnishes  the  keynote  of  my  lecture.  The  order 
which  nature  loves  and  weaves  is  not  a  stiff  and 
laborious  regularity,  but  an  easy  and  beautiful  play 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  35 

with  materials  that  seem  to  the  senses  huddled 
and  anarchical,  —  a  harmony  soaring,  at  last,  out 
of  independent,  interlaced,  and  often  tangled 
forces. 

We  often  say,  for  instance,  that  the  order  of  the 
solar  system  is  made  up  of  two  great  forces,  the 
centrifugal  tendency  of  the  planets  and  the  gravi- 
tating energy  of  the  sun.  But  this  statement  gives 
one  no  idea  of  the  intricacy  and  complexity  of  the 
plan  in  which  we  live.  If  we  could  stand  outside 
of  any  one  of  the  planets  in  our  family,  we  should 
not  find  it  cutting  a  regular  path  in  space  in  obe- 
dience to  two  simple  forces,  but  beating  this  way 
and  that,  now  swinging  out  towards  its  neighbor 
next  beyond,  and  then  reeling  the  other  way  to 
hail  its  fellow-orb  whose  path  is  next  within,  and 
so  oscillating  and  whirling  through  all  its  months 
until  it  accomplishes  its  round.  We  should  im- 
agine, could  we  see  them  very  near,  that  the 
planets  were  let  loose,  to  cut  up  capers  in  space, 
rather  than  to  measure  a  marvellous  harmony. 
The  earth  never  travels  the  same  track  any  two 
successive  years,  and  yet  it  never  fails  to  be 
punctual  to  the  minute,  and  the  fraction  of  a 
minute,  when  its  revolutions  should  be  accom- 
plished, but  keeps  time,  in  spite  of  its  roving, 
more  accurately  than  any  machine  of  human  in- 
vention can  be  made  to  do.  The  forces  that  whip 
and  curb  the  planets  suffer  them  to  dally  and 
prance  and  curvet  on  the  great  race-course  of  the 
ecliptic,  but  are  sure  to  bring  them  in  swift  and 


36  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

punctual  to  a  second  at  the  goal ;  so  that  the 
order  of  the  solar  system  is  not  the  poise  of  two 
forces  merely,  but  the  balance  of  constant  and 
countless  perturbations  of  that  poise.  As  though 
it  were  not  enough  to  bring  our  globe  around  true 
to  its  second  every  year  over  a  track  of  six  hun- 
dred millions  of  miles,  her  path  is  changed  every 
year,  and  still  the  time  is  kept  exact ;  and  if  it 
were  not  for  the  jaggedness,  the  continual  shift- 
ing, and  the  seeming  disorder  of  her  orbit,  the 
accuracy  of  her  obedience  and  the  stability  of  our 
harmony  would  be  ruined. 

So  the  regularity  of  the  mean  temperature  of 
any  district  is  a  striking  instance  of  the  secret  play 
of  law  in  a  most  frolicsome  way.  The  wind  is 
our  type  of  inconstancy ;  but  a  physical  atlas  of 
the  globe  will  show  us  that  its  currents  are  about 
as  well  defined  as  the  outlines  of  the  continents. 
What  is  more  uncertain  than  the  weather  a  day 
or  two  from  now,  what  more  capricious  than  the 
changes  of  the  weather  during  a  week  ?  Yet  the 
powers  of  vegetation  are  so  nicely  fitted  to  a  cer- 
tain average  temperature,  that  trees  and  plants 
would  die  if  in  the  whole  year,  or  in  a  succession 
of  two  or  three  years,  the  mean  warmth  should 
fall  five  degrees.  Such  a  variation  never  takes 
place.  Irregular  as  our  winters  are,  and  uncer- 
tain as  the  summer  heat  is,  we  get  the  needed 
result  with  wonderful  precision  when  the  tempera- 
tures of  our  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  are 
shuffled  together  and  brought  to  an  average.  Of 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  37 

course,  the  electrical  laws,  the  evaporating  forces, 
the  disturbances  that  generate  winds,  the  way  in 
which  the  earth  turns  to  the  sun  every  month  and 
the  swiftness  of  its  rotatory  motion,  the  laws  of  heat 
with  respect  to  the  earth,  the  water,  and  the  air, 
are  all  balanced  to  each  other  as  the  condition 
of  this  order ;  and  the  mean  temperature  is  the 
beautiful  figure  which  these  shuttles  that  fly  criss- 
cross and  hap-hazard  from  all  quarters  of  the  uni- 
verse weave  patiently,  as  a  witness  of  providential 
order,  into  the  warp  of  time. 

We  find,  too,  that  the  minutest  organizations 
on  the  earth's  surface  are  so  related  to  the  largest 
and  wildest  forces  of  nature  as  to  show  wonderful 
delicacy  and  subtlety  of  law.  When  we  see  com- 
mon plants  and  shrubs  growing  so  easily,  we  have 
no  idea  how  the  general  order  of  the  globe  and 
sky  is  toned  to  their  necessities.  With  regard 
to  a  common  wild-flower,  we  may  see  that  the 
force  of  gravitation  which  holds  its  fibres  in  the 
earth  and  strengthens  its  stalk  is  graduated  so 
that,  while  it  supports  a  constellation,  it  shall  not 
prevent  the  juices  from  rising  through  its  cells  to 
carry  life  to  the  leaves.  So  the  bulk  and  heat  of 
the  sun,  the  constitution  of  the  air,  the  size  of  the 
sea,  the  swiftness  of  the  earth's  whirling  and  the 
diameter  of  its  orbit,  are  determined  with  admi- 
rable relation  to  its  need  of  heat  and  rain  and 
wind,  its  alternations  of  light  and  gloom,  and  the 
changes  of  seasons  from  spring  to  winter.  An 
alteration  even  of  a  slight  percentage  in  the  mix- 


38  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

ture  and  partnership  of  these  great  forces  would 
destroy  the  possibility  of  the  daisy's  life.  But 
these  brawny  and  furious  powers  are  ordered  to 
bend  themselves  carefully  to  the  needs  of  the  most 
delicate  structures  ;  and  every  flower  is  so  nice  an 
index  of  the  adjustment  between  the  forces  of  the 
universe,  that  one  might  believe,  looking  at  it  ex- 
clusively, the  globe  and  the  solar  system  were  built 
by  the  Almighty  as  a  factory  to  turn  out  the  violets 
which  embroider  the  spring. 

In  the  methods  of  atomic  combinations,  also, 
a  striking  instance  of  the  same  subtle  presence 
of  law  is  seen.  Everything  we  see  in  nature  is  a 
chemical  compound,  and  an  analyst  can  untwist 
its  component  elements  and  show  them  in  their 
simplicity.  And  various  as  the  mixtures  are,  it  is 
found  that  a  splendid  regularity  rules  over  them. 
Separate  the  parts  of  water,  for  instance,  and  we 
get  8  parts  oxygen  to  i  part  hydrogen.  Now, 
whenever  oxygen  and  hydrogen  combine  in  any 
substance,  it  will  be  in  a  ratio  of  which  8  is  the 
basis.  There  may  be  16  parts  oxygen  to  i  hydro- 
gen, or  24  parts  to  i,  or  40  to  i  ;  but  no  instance 
can  be  found,  no  substance  in  all  known  nature, 
in  which  the  ratio  will  be  9  to  i  or  7  to  i,  or 
any  other  than  strictly  8  or  some  multiple  of  8. 
So  we  find  that  carbon  will  combine  with  other 
substances  only  in  the  ratio  of  which  6  is  the  key, 
nitrogen  in  a  proportion  of  14  or  some  of  its  mul- 
tiples, iron  by  parts  represented  by  28,  gold  by 
199,  etc.  Thus  it  is  plain  that  the  invisible  atoms 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  39 

of  things  are  under  strictest  chemical  drill,  and, 
stir  them  together  as  we  may,  they  will  file  by 
regular  platoons,  and  only  according  to  the  origi- 
nal word  of  command,  into  steady  combinations. 

The  science  of  botany  has  unfolded  some  very 
singular  and  beautiful  facts  which  contribute  richly 
to  the  illustration  of  our  subject.  Many  of  the 
most  important  plants  and  trees  are  dependent,  as 
to  their  fruit-bearing,  upon  intermediate  agencies 
that  carry  perhaps  from  a  great  distance  the  vege- 
table, dust  or  pollen  to  the  flower  of  the  plant  by 
which  it  is  made  productive.  The  whole  date- 
harvest  in  some  countries  of  the  East,  on  which 
the  sustenance  of  millions  of  men  depends,  is 
intrusted  to  the  fidelity  of  the  winds,  which  sweep 
the  quickening  seed-dust  sometimes  even  across 
Sahara  to  the  waiting  germens  of  the  fruit-bear- 
ing palm.  Sometimes  insects  are  the  mediating 
agents  between  the  different  trees.  The  fig-trade 
of  Smyrna,  and  the  food  of  thousands  of  our  race, 
is  dependent  on  the  yearly  fidelity  of  the  gall-fly, 
which  carries  in  season  the  needed  stimulant  from 
tree  to  tree.  So  the  Syrian  silk-plant  is  made 
productive  by  the  bees  that,  in  search  of  nectar, 
carry  on  their  waxen  thighs  the  feathery  principle 
of  life  from  flower  to  flower.  And  so  the  increase 
of  the  Kamschatkan  lily,  by  whose  bulbs  some- 
times the  whole  population  of  Greenland  is  saved 
from  starvation  in  a  hard  winter,  is  suspended  on 
the  regular  theft  of  a  kind  of  beetle  which  carries 
the  quickening  principle  of  growth  to  the  plant, 


4O  The  Laivs  of  Disorder. 

when  it  means  only  to  steal  its  own  support.  Thus 
the  one  beneficent  purpose  of  Providence  is  se- 
cured year  by  year  through  means  that  seem  to 
be  chances  or  accidents  :  what  seems  fluctuating 
disorder  to  the  senses  is  the  easy  and  joyous 
pulse  of  law. 

Thus  the  great  force  and  beauty  of  the  argu- 
ment against  atheism,  as  constructed  by  modern 
science,  lie  in  this,  that  so  many  independent  laws 
conspire  in  producing  the  regularity  and  system 
of  Nature.  One  might  conceive  that  out  of  the 
tumultuous  heavings  of  chaos  for  ages  some  gen- 
eral order  might  turn  up  at  last ;  but  a  mechan- 
ism so  intricate  as  our  globe  displays,  and  yet  so 
delicate,  perfected  by  a  thousand  junctions  and 
conspiracies  of  separate  threads  of  design,  the 
failure  of  any  one  of  which  would  entangle  the 
skein, —  what  length  of  ages  seems  sufficient  to 
produce  so  many  beneficent  concurrences  of  acci- 
dent, what  calculus  of  probabilities  is  able  to 
state  the  infinitesimal  likelihood  of  such  a  system 
happening  into  existence  ? 

We  may  represent  it  in  this  way.  A  heap  of 
types  many  millions  in  number  might  be  tossed 
up  so  that  every  now  and  then  they  would  fall 
into  combinations  of  words.  But  can  you  con- 
ceive of  a  throw  that  should  leave  them  in  words 
grammatically  joined,  so  that  each  independent 
sentence  would  be  readable  ?  Now  try  to  imagine 
what  chance  there  is  that  a  throw  could  happen  in 
which  the  separate  sensible  sentences  should  make 


TJie  Laws  of  Disorder.  41 

consecutive  paragraphs?  And  when  you  have 
tried  that  calculation,  think  of  a  throw  occurring 
in  which  the  types  should  fall  so  that  words  fit 
into  sentences,  sentences  into  paragraphs,  and 
these  again  into  chapters,  nay,  perhaps  rhymes 
or  measured  lines,  paragraphs  and  chapters  giving 
you  a  Waverley  novel  or  a  tragedy  of  Shakespeare 
or  the  Iliad  of  Homer,  —  not  only  connected 
grammatical  sense,  but  characters  drawn  and  re- 
lated to  each  other,  the  finest  strokes  of  genius 
visible  in  the  subordinate  portions,  and  all  fitting 
into  a  subtle  unity  which  the  most  cultivated  critic 
studies  with  greatest  marvel  and  delight !  There 
you  have  the  problem  of  atheism  partially  pre- 
sented in  the  light  of  science  now.  The  unity 
and  harmony  of  the  natural  world  are  analogous 
to  the  unity  and  symmetry  of  a  printed  work  of 
genius ;  and  so  the  doctrine  of  chances  ridicules 
the  theory  of  cha?ice. 

A  whole  lecture  might  be  devoted  to  the  beau- 
tiful proofs  from  the  physical  world  for  the  play 
of  law  amid  seemingly  chaotic  and  accidental 
facts ;  but  I  must  pass  on  and  invite  your  atten- 
tion to  the  most  striking  illustrations  that  may  be 
drawn  from  society.  The  idea  very  seldom  enters 
any  mind  that  there  is  any  organization  of  society 
at  all  except  that  which  men  deliberately  produce 
by  rules  of  laws  or  by  military  force.  The  general 
feeling  is  that  outside  these  arbitrary  arrangements 
social  facts  are  casual  and  at  loose  ends.  But  the 
truth  is,  that  the  order  which  man  makes  in  society 


42  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

is  very  slight  compared  with  that  which  secret  forces 
make,  over  which  he  has  no  control,  and  whose 
processes  human  wisdom  cannot  fathom  at  all. 

No  statutes  of  human  enactment,  no  progress 
of  the  age,  no  increase  of  scientific,  educational, 
or  mechanical  advantages,  nothing  in  the  range 
of  human  wisdom  and  power,  is  of  such  vital  im- 
portance to  the  interests  and  growth  of  society  as 
that  there  should  be  in  every  generation  a  particu- 
lar and  stable  proportion  between  the  men  and 
women  that  inhabit  the  globe.  The  idea  of  set- 
ting a  man  to  guess  how  many  boys  and  how 
many  girls  there  are  in  each  household  of  Boston 
would  seem  ridiculous ;  and  yet  extend  your  sur- 
vey to  the  State  of  Massachusetts  or  to  New  Eng- 
land, and  a  mathematician  will  tell  you  with  sur- 
prising correctness,  not  only  what  the  proportion 
of  boys  to  girls  is  now,  but  also  what  it  will  be  in 
the  next  generation.  Looking  over  this  civilized 
world,  we  find  that  the  ratio  of  births  is  always 
one  hundred  and  six  males  to  one  hundred  females. 
Various  speculations  have  been  entertained  as  to 
the  cause  for  this  preference  by  Providence  of  a 
slight  excess  of  the  sterner  sex.  Some  have  said 
that  it  is  to  compensate  for  the  wastes  of  war  and 
to  furnish  material  for  standing  armies;  others  have 
imagined  that  it  is  Nature's  method  of  supplying 
candidates  for  the  Catholic  priesthood ;  again,  it 
has  been  suggested  that  civilization  needs  the 
peculiar  influence  that  is  shed  into  society  from 
a  certain  number  of  old  bachelors,  the  delicate 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  43 

aroma  and  flavor  they  impart  to  civilization,  like 
the  drops  of  lemon  in  a  punch,  or  mustard  in  a 
salad,  and  therefore  that  the  constitution  of  things 
ordains  that  there  must  be  four  or  five  per  cent 
at  least  of  the  masculine  race  for  whom  no  part- 
ners are  furnished  in  the  waltz  of  life ;  but  per- 
haps the  most  philosophical  and  satisfactory  rea- 
son is  that  which  a  lady  gave  me  the  other  day, 
namely,  that  it  is  to  insure  an  equilibrium  of 
character,  this  inequality  being  Nature's  subtle  way 
of  confessing  that  a  hundred  women  amount  to  as 
much,  any  day,  as  one  hundred  and  six  men. 

But  whatever  theory  we  adopt,  here  is  the  won- 
derful fact  that  this  proportion  continues  century 
by  century,  upholding  civilization  by  its  mysterious 
constancy.  If  it  should  alter  by  any  considerable 
percentage  in  favor  of  a  large  majority  of  males, 
civilization  would  be  encircled  by  a  ferocity  as 
pleasant  to  contemplate  as  a  circle  of  wolves  belt- 
ing the  huts  of  settlers  in  the  forest!  If  it  should 
alter  in  favor  of  a  large  majority  of  women,  the 
present  discussions  and  movements  in  favor  of 
women's  rights  would  simply  change  the  gender  of 
their  pronouns,  and  the  position  of  Mrs.  Abby 
Folsom  in  a  public  meeting  now  would  be  a  type 
of  masculine  influence  and  heroism  among  the 
feminine  autocrats  and  politicians. 

Moreover,  subordinate  to  this  general  law  which 
fixes  the  proportions  of  births,  we  may  see  a  sin- 
gular and  unfailing  order  in  the  boundless  diver- 
sity of  expression  produced  out  of  the  general 


44  The  Lazvs  of  Disorder. 

likeness  of  features  among  people.  It  is  very 
difficult  for  an  artist  to  conceive  and  chisel  a  new 
face  out  of  the  proportions  of  the  Greek  outline, 
or  any  strong  national  type.  Yet  out  of  the  mil- 
lions living  in  any  large  country,  out  of  the  hun- 
dreds of  millions  on  the  globe,  nay,  out  of  the 
myriads  of  millions  since  Adam,  scarcely  any  two 
could  be  mistaken  for  each  other.  And  all  this  is 
effected  by  dissimilarities  so  slight,  when  measured 
by  the  compass,  as  to  seem  of  no  consequence 
when  mathematically  stated.  Nature  distinguishes 
the  red-haired  people  from  each  other  as  easily  as 
the  brown  and  black  heads;  pug  noses  are  dis- 
criminated most  happily;  dark  complexions  do  not 
confuse  the  individualities  of  countenance  ;  no  two 
pairs  of  blue  or  hazel  eyes  are  steeped  with  the 
same  gentleness  or  brilliancy ;  and  even  the  Chi- 
nese, who  look  certainly  to  an  uneducated  eye  like 
a  monotonous  nation  of  universal  twins,  no  doubt 
seem  to  their*  own  visual  organs  broken  up  into 
distinguishable  personalities. 

Now,  we  need  not  reflect  long  to  discover  the 
various  and  indispensable  benefits  of  this  beauti- 
ful law.  How  apparent  it  is  that  the  subtlest 
pleasures  of  social  intercourse,  the  possibilities  of 
friendship,  the  interesting  arts  and  the  delicate  joys 
of  courtship,  and  even  the  solemn  interests  of  jus- 
tice, hang  upon  these  fine  distinctions  in  the  faces 
of  people.  Of  how  trifling  avail  would  laws  be,  if 
men  could  hide  their  guilty  personalities  under  a 
mask  of  universal  resemblance,  so  that  the  rogue 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  45 

need  only  say  in  the  court-room,  where  fifty  copies 
of  himself  perhaps  surrounded  the  bench,  "  Thou 
canst  not  say  I  did  it."  In  case  of  marriage,  too, 
the  only  question  for  a  person  to  decide  would  be 
what  age  he  or  she  would  prefer  for  husband  or 
wife,  taking  the  first  that  offers ;  the  only  sure 
way  of  proving  identity  would  be  for  persons  to 
wear  tickets  with  proper  labels,  attested  by  the 
minister  or  court,  "This  may  certify  that  I  am 
Henry  Johnson's  wife,"  or  "  This  is  proof  that  I 
have  married  Sarah  Jones  " ;  while  the  ludicrous 
experiences  of  the  two  Dromios  in  Shakespeare 
would  be  the  keynote  of  daily  life,  and  society 
would  be  a  magnificent  "  Comedy  of  Errors." 
The  illustration  may  be  light,  but  is  not  the  fact 
suggestive  and  sublime,  that  hidden  laws  alto- 
gether beyond  human  will  provide  for  this  diversity 
of  expression  on  which  the  glory  of  society  de- 
pends, and  .do  it  all  so  easily  and  within  such 
moderate  limits  that  nature  seldom  strays  into  a 
monstrosity,  seldom  offends  us  with  Albinas  and 
bearded  women,  Aztec  children  and  Siamese  twins? 
Some  of  the  statistics  concerning  the  physical 
development  of  man  are  quite  interesting.  Thus 
it  is  a  law  of  nature  that  the  pulse  shall  vary  by 
regular  gradation  by  the  increase  of  years.  The 
hearts  of  the  infants  on  the  planet  six  months 
old  are  tiny  time-keepers,  beating  one  hundred 
and  thirty-seven  strokes  a  minute,  at  a  year  old 
one  hundred  and  twenty-six  beats  a  minute,  at  two 
years  old  one  hundred  and  twenty,  and  so  by 


46  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

regular  decrease  till  in  maturity  it  is  from  seventy- 
five  to  eighty,  and  in  old  age  from  sixty  to  sixty-five. 
Those,  therefore,  who  complain  of  the  restless  ac- 
tivity of  children  might  as  well  complain  that  the 
minute  hand  of  a  watch  moves  faster  than  the  hour 
hand.  Stop  the  fever  in  their  veins,  and  you  may 
stop  their  mischief,  their  disquiet,  and  their  glee. 
By  these  swift  and  constant  pulses  through  their 
arteries  Nature  tells  us  that  she  will  have  all  the 
children  alike  in  the  quickness  of  their  motion, 
the  agility  and  spirit  of  their  intellect,  the  keen- 
ness of  their  sensibility,  and  calls  on  all  parents  and 
teachers  to  graduate  the  laws  of  their  home  and 
the  customs  of  the  school  to  the  motion  of  blood 
that  is  faster  than  the  fever-speed. 

So  in  regard  to  growth  there  is  law.  All  the 
children  of  the  world  gain  nearly  eight  inches  in 
height  the  first  year  of  their  existence,  gaining 
two  fifths  from  their  birth  to  that  period ;  during 
the  second  year,  the  gain  is  one  seventh  ;  during 
the  third,  one  eleventh ;  and  so  on  in  regular 
gradations  till  increasing  height  terminates,  which 
in  man  is  a  little  after  twenty-five  and  in  woman 
about  twenty.  Those  who  live  in  affluence  are 
generally  taller  than  those  who  do  not;  those 
who  live  in  town  at  the  age  of  nineteen  are  taller 
than  those  who  live  in  the  country.  The  stature 
we  reach  is  about  three  and  a  fourth  times  greater 
than  our  measurement  at  birth,  and  our  weight 
almost  twenty  times  as  much.  At  twelve  years 
old,  the  two  sexes  weigh  about  the  same.  Man 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  47 

attains  the  maximum  of  his  weight  at  about  forty, 
and  woman  at  about  fifty. 

As  to  mortality,  the  statistical  tables  all  bear  wit- 
ness to  secret  and  constant  laws.  We  talk  of  the 
uncertainty  of  life  ;  and  with  regard  to  the  duration 
of  any  particular  person's  existence,  nothing  can 
seem  to  be  more  uncertain.  But  take  a  city  oi 
state  into  account,  and  we  can  prophecy  with  sin- 
gular accuracy  how  many  of  any  ten  thousand 
infants  will  live  to  be  a  year  old  ;  how  many  will 
pass  on  to  two,  three,  and  five  years  ;  how  many 
will  weather  the  diseases  and  dangers  of  youth  ;  — 
in  a  word,  what  number  will  be  sifted  out  by  each 
year  into  the  grave,  and  how  few  will  be  left  at 
eighty,  ninety,  and  one  hundred  to  tell  of  a  gen- 
eration that  has  gone  down  into  the  dust.  It  is 
impossible  to  designate,  or  calculate,  the  particu- 
lar individuals  that  will  fulfil  this  law ;  but  the 
law  itself  will  hold  as  rigidly  as  the  rule  of  three. 
We  may  even  foretell  what  proportions  of  those 
that  die  will  be  males  and  what  females  ;  what 
diseases  will  carry  them  off;  how  many  will  die  of 
brain,  of  liver,  of  lung,  or  stomach  disorders  ; 
what  months  will  be  most  disastrous  ;  what  profes- 
sions and  trades  will  send  the  largest  percentage 
to  the  tomb;  and  among  what  classes  of  occupa- 
tion those  who  live  the  longest  will  be  distributed. 
We  may  mention  here  what  an  aged  clergyman 
said,  not  long  ago,  of  bronchitis,  which  does  so 
much  to  swell  the  profits  of  transatlantic  naviga- 
tion :  "  Seems  to  me,  I  never  heard  of  bron- 


48  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

chitis  till  they  began  to  talk  about  the  independ- 
ence of  the  pulpit."  The  law  of  the  statistics  of 
any  ten  or  twenty  years  is  the  law  for  the  statis- 
tics of  the  next  ten  and  the  next  twenty  ;  except 
when  there  has  been  increase  of  cleanliness  and 
of  sanitary  fidelity  on  the  part  of  governments,  — 
for  this  care  reaches  directly  into  the  census-tables, 
and  reduces  at  once  the  percentage  of  mortality. 
We  know  with  what  confidence  life-insurance 
offices  rely  upon  the  stability  of  law  with  regard 
to  the  duration  of  existence.  They  may  lose  on 
Mr.  A.  or  Mr.  B.,  but  they  lay  their  premiums  so 
that  on  ten  thousand  lives  they  are  sure  of  the 
result,  and  can  foretell  the  profit  they  will  make. 
Life-insurance,  dealing  in  risks  and  staking  on 
accidents,  stands  in  the  front  rank  of  those  lines 
of  business  in  which  there  is  no  uncertainty. 

In  the  more  literal  sense  of  the  term,  the  dis- 
orders of  the  world  obey  some  law.  For  the  dis- 
eases to  which  the  human  body  is  subject  have 
their  order.  The  variety  of  them,  the  regularity 
of  the  symptoms,  the  methodical  stages  of  their 
progress,  the  spiritual  uses  they  serve,  show  that 
the  same  providence  which  is  manifested  in  our 
health  and  the  symmetry  of  our  organs  is  hidden 
in  the  disorders  that  afflict  us.  All  measles  have 
the  same  stamp.  Fevers  are  classified,  and  train 
in  companies  with  uniform.  Contributions  to 
natural  theology  as  rich  and  conclusive  can  be 
made  from  the  laws  of  malady  as  from  the  health- 
ful action  of  our  frames.  A  distinguished  phy- 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  49 

sician  of  Dublin  pulished,  two  or  three  years  ago, 
a  very  interesting  work  called  "  God  in  Disease," 
to  illustrate  the  subtle  plan  and  under-current  of 
beneficence  in  the  sickness  of  mankind.  Nature 
is  no  Vandal  in  destroying  our  health  :  she  does 
not  attack  the  frame  usually  with  a  lawless  bat- 
tering-ram, but  takes  down  the  pillars  and  orna- 
ments and  roofing  of  our  bodily  temple  very 
carefully  and  systematically,  as  though  she  was 
packing  up  the  parts  for  shipment  to  another 
clime. 

Even  crime  is  not  incalculable.  The  lawless 
elements  in  human  nature,  the  anarchy  in  a  state, 
obeys  a  law.  The  moral  darkness,  the  social 
neglects,  and  the  inward  depravities  of  a  state  or 
nation,  reveal  themselves  steadily  in  a  remarkably 
constant  proportion  of  criminals  and  of  the  kinds 
of  criminals.  So  that  the  problem  would  not  be 
at  all  insoluble,  How  many  forgers,  burglars, 
murderers,  and  counterfeiters  will  New  England 
turn  out  next  year?  It  could  more  easily  be 
ciphered  than  the  number  of  bales  of  manufac- 
tured goods  which  our  factories  will  supply  could 
be  forecast.  The  scamp  element  is  less  subject 
to  fluctuation  in  society  than  the  cotton  element ; 
and  in  regard  to  cotton,  its  moral  influence  upon 
the  politics  and  feelings  of  New  England  would 
be  a  question  admitting  of  surer  prophecy  than 
the  amount  of  money  to  be  made  on  it. 

Thus  we  find  it  continues  true  that  about  one 
man  in  every  six  hundred  and  fifty  in  France  is  a 
3  D 


50  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

criminal  (beginning  with  the  Emperor).  And  a 
moral  map  of  the  country  has  been  drawn,  show- 
ing definitely  shaded  districts  within  which  crimes 
against  persons  or  crimes  against  property  are 
shown  to  be  predominant,  —  steady  moral  causes 
lying  underneath  which  reveal  themselves  in  these 
different  disturbances  of  order.  So  the  number 
taken  in  charge  by  the  police  in  London  and 
other  great  cities  for  drunkenness  and  disorder 
keeps,  week  by  week,  the  same  percentage,  except 
where  the  Maine  Liquor  Law  jumps  with  a  con- 
stable's pole  into  the  arena ;  then  the  number 
is  very  sensibly  reduced. 

It  is  discovered  that  the  number  of  suicides 
observes  a  constant  proportion  to  the  number  of 
people.  A  statistician  can  tell  how  many  per- 
sons will  take  their  life  in  Paris  during  the  next 
two  or  three  years  ;  the  proportion  of  these  that 
will  hang,  drown,  poison,  and  shoot  themselves, 
and  also  between  what  hours  most  of  such  deaths 
will  occur.  For  it  is  a  fact  that  between  six  and 
eight-in  the  morning  is  the  most  fatal  time,  and 
that  while  suicides  between  twenty  and  thirty 
years  old  prefer  to  die  by  the  bullet,  those  be- 
tween fifty  and  sixty,  which  furnish  the  largest 
number,  select  the  rope. 

It  is  singular  how  the  most  out-of-the-way  facts, 
when  rigidly  inspected,  betray  a  curious  order. 
Thus  it  is  found  in  the  post-offices  of  large  cities 
that  mistakes  and  oversights  of  direction,  and  the 
number  of  letters  mailed  without  addresses,  is, 


The  Laws  of  Dis&dler\  •  5  f  1{  V> 

A  i* .  < 

/^ '  'S'  /  *• 

year  by  year,  proportionately  th4  ^irne.  ^  And  £}w 

"  Guaranty  Society  "  was  formed  a  few  yelars/  agjo 
in  London  to  insure  the  integrity  of  clerks,  secre-/  < 
taries,  and  collectors.  The  instances  of  dishon- 
esty were  so  regular,  that  by  clubbing  all  the 
clerks  and  taxing  each  one  a  slight  sum,  they 
could  be  security  for  each  other  on  the  principle 
of  fire  or  life  insurance.  So  railroad  and  steam- 
ship accidents  keep  a  sufficiently  steady  ratio  to 
indicate  some  law  and  order  in  their  confusion. 
As  to  shipwrecks,  it  is  said  the  average  is  one  to 
every  tide,  —  the  storm  spirit  levying  that  tax 
upon  the  world's  commerce  to  offset  the  general 
safety  of  the  sea.  It  was  the  "  London  Punch," 
I  believe,  that  made  a  mathematical  demonstra- 
tion, a  few  months  ago,  of  the  folly  of  ever  ex- 
pecting to  go  to  the  moon  by  railroad.  (No  mat- 
ter, it  said,  if  a  track  should  be  laid  and  the 
trains  start  regularly  from  this  planet,  and  the 
passengers  get  ticketed  through,  the  case  is  hope- 
less. Scientific  calculations  show,  it  said,  that 
one  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  miles  is  the  ut- 
most limit  that  any  train  could  travel  without  a 
perfect  smash-up,  by  series  of  disasters,  axle-break- 
ings, collisions,  explosions,  open  draws,  snake- 
heads,  spreading  of  tracks,  snow-storms,  etc. ; 
and  as  the  distance  to  the  moon  is  two  hundred 
and  forty  thousand  miles,  it  follows,  by  arithmetic, 
that  every  train  would  be  demolished  and  all  the 
passengers  used  up  by  the  time  they  had  gone 
three  quarters  of  the  distance.)  It  is  affirmed, 


52  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

also,  now,  as  a  settled  truth,  that  the  number  of 
those  who  draw  any  tolerable  prizes  in  lotteries  is 
about  the  same  as  the  number  of  those  who  are 
struck  by  lightning.  So  that  a  man  has  only  to 
ask  himself,  when  about  to  try  that  species  of 
gambling,  what  he  is  willing  to  pay  for  the  likeli- 
hood of  a  visit  from  a  thunderbolt,  and  offer  his 
cash  as  a  conductor.  So  it  is  reported  that  of  the 
five  hundred  and  thirty-seven  young  ladies  who 
fainted  the  last  year,  it  is  quite  remarkable  that 
only  two  fell  upon  the  floor.  Somewhere,  too,  I 
have  seen  it  stated  that  if  on  a  public  road  you 
meet  a  party  of  four  women,  it  is  at  least  fifty  to 
one  that  they  are  all  laughing ;  whereas,  if  you 
meet  an  equal  party  of  my  own  unhappy  sex,  you 
may  wager,  safely,  that  they  are  talking  gravely, 
and  that  one  of  them  is  uttering  the -word  "  money." 
Mr.  Beecher  has  lately,  I  believe,  discovered  that 
the  proportion  of  ministers'  sons  who  turn  out 
rascals  is  two  and  a  half  per  cent,  thus  deducting 
ninety-seven  and  a  half  per  cent  from  the  truth 
of  the  maxim  that  "  ministers'  sons  are  the  devil's 
grandsons."  Thus  the  survey  of  the  tables  of 
birth  and  death  in  all  their  minuteness,  and  of 
other  eccentric  statistics,  justifies  the  remark  of  an 
essayist,  that  if  you  find  one  man  in  fifty,  in  any 
community,  who  eats  his  shoes  and  marries  his 
grandmother,  you  may  be  sure  that  all  over  the 
world  it  will  turn  out  that  one  man  in  fifty  eats  his 
shoes  and  marries  his  grandmother. 

Perhaps  I  have  delayed  too  long  an  allusion  to 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  53 

the  curious  columns  which  the  records  of  marriage 
offer  as  contributions  to  our  subject.  Not  only  the 
proportion  of  marriages  is  generally  the  same,  but 
the  ages  of  the  parties  maintain  regular  relations. 
Moreover,  statistics  are  continually  forcing  upon, 
our  notice  a  fixed  percentage  of  repentant  old  bach- 
elors ;  also  of  young  bachelors  that  marry  widows  ; 
also  of  young  women  that  marry  old  men  and  of 
widowers  that  renew  their  vows  ;  while  the  ratio  of 
second,  third,  and  fourth  marriages  is  very  constant. 
It  is  no  more  singular  than  true  that  eccentric 
unions  are  as  regular  as  the  more  natural  ones.  In- 
deed, it  has  most  profanely  come  to  pass  that,  just 
as  the  stars  are  nothing  but  points  of  vast  triangles 
and  diagrams  to  a  cold-blooded  astronomer,  so 
every  unmarried  woman  in  the  community  stands 
as  an  algebraic  symbol  to  the  eye  of  a  social 
mathematician  :  if  she  is  twenty  years  old,  repre- 
senting three  quarters  of  a  likelihood  that  she  will 
change  her  name  ;  if  twenty-five,  standing  for  one 
quarter  of  the  same  possibility ;  if  thirty,  reduced 
to  a  fraction  of  one  divided  by  ten  ;  and  then 
decreasing  in  a  geometrical  ratio  which  it  would 
hardly  be  polite  to  put  into  figures  here.  On  the 
contrary,  a  man  of  twenty-five  represents  the  frac- 
tion one-half  as  to  the  probabilities  of  marriage, 
which  is  so  vulgar  a  fraction  that  most  young  men 
of  that  period-  strive  ardently  to  annihilate  it  by 
finding  the  other  and  better  half  which  restores 
their  integrity. 

This  last  point  suggests  the  fact  that  even  love  — 


54  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

indefinable,  capricious,  romantic,  as  we  often  think 
it — is  most  delicately  restricted  within  bounds  of 
law.  No  doubt  every  young  lady  in  her  early  dreams 
is  very  particular  as  to  the  looks  and  quality  of  the 
youth  that  shall  gain  her  heart.  He  must  be  the 
very  flower  of  the  human  race.  And  every  young 
man  is  equally  dainty  in  his  reveries  concerning 
his  ideal  partner.  She  must  be  the  very  flower 
of  the  human  race.  But  the  stock  of  Adam  does 
not  bear  flowers  enough  to  supply  this  wide  de- 
mand of  perfection  ;  so  that  if  we  should  compare 
the  dreams  which  are  in  the  hearts  of  youths  of 
both  sexes,  nothing  would  seem  so  hopeless  as  to 
match  the  world  in  the  long  contra-dance  of  mar- 
riage. Plato,  in  one  of  his  dialogues,  worked  out 
a  sportive  fancy  that  the  human  race  was  originally 
created  so  that  each  was  complete,  —  the  proper 
partner  of  each  soul  being  joined  to  it  from  birth. 
But  as  the  race  was  altogether  too  happy  and  in- 
dependent thus,  Jupiter  cut  the  blissful  couples  in 
two,  as  quinces  are  divided  before  they  are  pre- 
served, and  then  dispersed  them  over  the  planet. 
So,  he  said,  that  each  person  is  the  counterpart  of 
another  human  creature,  and  goes  about  seeking 
its  complement.  The  happiness  of  every  mar- 
riage, he  maintained,  depends  on  finding  the  real 
half  that  belongs  to  the  soul ;  all  unhappy  ones 
are  false  assortments,  —  the  man  sometimes  not 
being  a  fair  match  for  the  woman,  and  very  often 
the  woman  being  an  overmatch  for  the  man.  Now 
if  the  difficulties  of  mating  people  happily  were 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  55 

as  great  as  they  should  seem  beforehand,  —  if 
there  were  not  a  large  probability  that  those  ex- 
quisite feminine  dreams  should  embody  themselves 
in  the  young  man  that  really  offered  his  "hand, 
transforming  him  into  the  Adonis  ;  or  if  the  celes- 
tial ideal  of  the  youth  did  not,  after  a  while, 
almost  surely  interfuse  itself  into  the  form  and 
glorify  the  face  of  some  young  lady  not  far  from 
his  own  terrestrial  latitude  and  longitude,  —  what 
a  miserable  world  we  should  have  of  it !  Senti- 
mental Raphaels  pensive  and  melancholy  over  the 
mocking  beauty  of  their  reveries,  a  world  love- 
sick for  ghosts  !  But  Providence  has  ordained  that 
love  shall  wear  the  gossamer  harness  of  law  ;  and 
so  the  race  falls  into  line,  two  and  two,  by  mar- 
riages that  are  generally  happy,  as  naturally  and 
regularly  as  the  animals  walked  two  and  two  into 
the  ark. 

Indeed,  as  we  take  the  moral  world  more 
strictly  into  the  domain  of  our  survey,  the  results 
are  more  marvellous.  Society  is  an  immense 
organization,  intellectually  and  morally,  as  well 
as  politically  and  by  statute.  As  to  conservative 
and  radical  tendencies,  it  has  a  structure  as  de- 
fined as  the  relation  between  nerves  and  bones 
in  the  physical  frame.  In  every  community  there 
are  enough  of  those  restless  by  constitution,  and 
reformatory  by  vision,  to  prevent  society  from 
sinking  into  stupid  lethargy  ;  while  the  majority 
are  made  to  be  reverent  of  the  past,  content  with 
the  present,  and  needing  great  stimulant  and  the 


56  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

pressure  of  great  wrong  to  provoke  them  into 
attitudes  of  resistance  or  the  countenance  of 
revolutionary  schemes.  This  is  a  matter  of  birth 
and  temperament,  resulting  from  the  infusion  of 
different  classes  of  sentiment  into  the  original 
structure  of  souls  ;  and  thus  permanent  basis  is 
provided  for  the  strong  and  solid  growth  of  civil- 
ization. In  fact,  it  is  a  decree  of  our  organization 
that  the  reformer  himself  shall  grow  conservative 
after  he  is  forty  or  forty-five,  while  the  shell  of 
the  natural  Hunker  hardens  on  him  then  like  the 
case  of  the  crocodile.  If  a  generation  should  be 
born  in  which  no  fiery  souls  with  burning  demo- 
cratic instincts  and  hopes,  impatient  for  the  future, 
should  appear,  society  would  be  like  a  long  train 
of  cars  without  an  engine.  And  if,  for  once,  all 
the  individuals  of  a  race  should  grow  up  scornful 
of  past  wisdom  and  rabid  for  advance,  —  social 
Jehus,  —  what  a  moral  stampede  would  be  ex- 
hibited !  A  general  rush  on  all  sides  for  no  par- 
ticular object  except  "  the  good  time  coming," 
making  society  like  a  long  train  of  engines,  each 
with  the  steam  up,  each  crowding  the  one  ahead, 
but  with  no  train  attached,  no  passengers  or 
freight,  everybody  an  engineer  or  fireman,  and 
bound  for  no  place  in  particular,  only  for  prog- 
ress as  long  as  the  track  will  hold  out ! 

How  beautiful,  too,  is  the  law  that  distributes 
multitudes  of  society  into  different  occupations, 
thus  insuring  a  full  development  of  social  good  ! 
Different  callings  are  provided  for  by  inborn 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  57 

tastes.  Nature  predestines  some  of  our  race  to 
be  sailors.  They  are  baptized  to  be  agents  and 
expressmen  of  the  world's  commerce  by  the  spray 
of  the  sea.  Their  fancy  in  childhood  is  busy  with 
the  restless  waves  ;  their  hearts  are  cradled  in 
young  dreams  upon  the  maternal  swell  of  the 
deep,  and  the  "  Pirate's  Own  Book  "  only  adds 
the  charm  of  danger  to  the  other  invitations  away 
from  the  comforts  of  a  settled  life  which  the  bil- 
lows whisper  to  them. 

So  the  classes  of  farmers  and  mechanics,  of 
merchants,  surveyors,  and  engineers,  have  natures 
among  them  predestined  by  their  aptitudes  to  be 
eminent  and  successful.  Many  have  an  inborn 
passion  for  an  adventurous  life ;  explorers,  pion- 
eers, settlers  of  states,  frontiersmen,  the  first  on 
the  ground  in  Californias  and  Australias,  burrow- 
ers  after  buried  Ninevehs  ;  while  there  are  others 
whom  no  temptations  could  induce  to  abandon 
the  settled  ways  and  regular  comforts  of  home. 
Some,  moreover,  are  foreordained  to  be  mathema- 
ticians ;  in  childhood,  Euclid  is  their  story-book. 
A  few  are  appointed  to  be  poets ;  they  lisp  in 
numbers,  for  the  numbers  come.  Others  are  com- 
pelled to  be  artists  ;  while  here  and  there  a  musi- 
cian starts  up  in  whose  heart  winged  melodies 
nestle  that  by  and  by  visit  a  thousand  homes  and 
charm  the  attention  of  a  grateful  world.  Every 
profession,  too,  finds  those  that  have  its  stamp 
upon  them,  marked  by  nature  to  be  physicians 
or  instructors,  lawyers,  legislators,  or  clergymen. 
3* 


58  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

Each  of  the  sciences  has  its  predetermined  vota- 
ries ;  for  there  are  eyes  that  turn  spontaneously 
to  the  sky  ;  men  like  Kepler,  Newton,  Laplace, 
Herschel,  Le  Verrier,  —  as  much  ordained  to 
track  the  stars  as  the  stars  are  ordained  to  move 
and  shine  ;  tastes,  too,  there  are  that  find  their 
nutriment  in  chemistry,  in  botany,  in  optics  and 
statics,  in  geology  and  mineralogy ;  while  the 
bees  find  their  poets,  the  birds  impassioned  Au- 
dubon,  the  animalcules  their  delighted  analysts, 
every  tribe  of  animals  its  biographer  and  critic, 
and  every  bone,  nerve,  and  disorder  of  the  human 
frame  its  preordained  anatomist  and  skilful  bene- 
factor. 

With  regard  to  the  rarer  manifestations  of  liter- 
ary character  and  tastes  some  law  seems  to  hold. 
There  are  always  enough  with  a  delicate  appetite 
for  old  wisdom  to  give  the  best  authors  of  the  past 
an  appreciative  audience,  and  continually  renew 
their  dress  in  modern  type.  Critics  do  not  fail, 
who  shall  be  nice  tasters  and  appraisers  of  the 
great  creative  and  constructive  minds.  We  find, 
too,  that  every  community  is  supplied  with  anti- 
quarians, mousers  of  genealogies,  rummagers  of 
old  print-shops  and  pamphlet-baskets,  autograph- 
collectors,  coin-fanciers,  microscopic  sceptics  who 
must  have  a  focal  blaze  upon  every  received  fact 
of  history  ;  whitewashes  of  old  rascalities  who 
find  subtle  reasons  to  reverse  the  judgment  of 
centuries,  and  to  turn  Catiline  and  Tiberius  Cae- 
sar, Richard  III.,  Robespierre,  and  Napoleon  into 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  59 

unrecognized  and  injured  saints.  A  fixed  per- 
centage also  seems  to  limit  the  number  of  those 
who  shall  carry  on  the  ultra-abolition  meetings, 
and  carry  on  in  them.  So  the  Women's  Rights 
conventions,  Fourier  newspapers  and  plans,  the 
Kossuth  hats  and  Bloomer  costume,  Second  Ad- 
vent Miller,  and  the  Mormon  Bible  are  in  pre- 
established  harmony  with  a  certain  proportion  of 
every  civilized  community  that  must  be  fed  on 
excitements,  extravagances,  and  vagaries.  The 
social  world  has  been  compared  to  a  vast  board 
with  all  kinds  of  apertures  in  it,  —  square,  three- 
cornered,  queer,  crooked,  —  and  every  generation 
to  a  set  of  plugs  carved  by  Providence  into  shapes 
to  fit  the  openings.  But  alas  !  on  one  point  sta- 
tistics begin  to  stand  aghast ;  percentage  and  pro- 
portions have  rapidly  risen  till  we  begin  to  ask 
what  limit  shall  be  set  to  the  number  of  mediums 
that  can  throw  healthy  chairs  into  fits  and  make 
a  sober  table  tipsy,  or  the  believers  in  the  univer- 
ccelum  who  take  the  wrigglings  of  furniture  for 
inspiration,  and  delight  in  the  electric  jigs  of  a 
ghost  on  smooth  walnut  and  mahogany. 

We  all  know  with  what  beautiful  accuracy  the 
wastes  of  the  human  body  are  supplied  with 
blood,  —  how  the  right  proportion  of  nutriment  is 
carried  to  every  limb  and  organ  and  each  particle 
of  the  skin.  Thus  the  various  limbs  and  organs 
of  society  are  refreshed  and  restored  by  the  new 
currents  6f  population  which  feed  its  veins  against 
the  wastes  of  death.  With  regard  to  masculine 


60  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

and  feminine  elements,  it  is  plain  and  it  is  well 
that  the  proportion  does  not  fluctuate  ;  for  society 
depends  not  only  upon  the  continued  ratio  be- 
tween men  and  women,  but  also  on  the  continu- 
ance of  the  manly  and  feminine  type  of  character 
underneath  the  wide  diversities  of  individuals  in 
each  sex.  The  women's  rights  movement  is  wise 
and  wholesome  to  this  extent,  that  it  is  bringing 
into  prominence  the  ministry  and  the  worth  of  the 
feminine  side  of  the  social  organism.  The  next 
great  movement  in  civilization,  we  may  believe, 
will  be  to  bring  this  into  equipoise  with  the  energy 
and  strength  of  man,  so  that  the  finer  and  softer 
qualities  of  the  other  sex,  with  all  the  wisdom  that 
may  ripen  upon  them  and  all  the  influence  that 
must  belong  to  them  when  perfected,  shall  become 
of  account  in  education  and  appear  in  the  com- 
plexion of  society.  The  demands  that  women 
shall  have  equal  political  authority  with  men,  be 
legislators,  merchants,  commodores,  and  generals, 
are  only  the  momentary  contortions  of  a  move- 
ment that  has  deep  roots  and  immense  impor- 
tance, founded  in  the  necessity,  for  the  sake  of 
social  health,  that  women  should  be  more  than 
elegant  autocrats  of  the  kitchen,  graceful  orna- 
ments of  the  parlor  and  ball-room,  and  walking 
advertisements  of  lace-stores  and  bonnet-rooms ; 
that  they  shall  become  sources  of  qualities  which 
shall  make  society  refined  as  well  as  strong,  cover 
it  with  affections  and  sensibilities  that  enwrap 
its  vigor,  and  save  it  from  standing  to  our  imagi- 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  6 1 

nation  like  a  bony  and  slab-sided  Yankee,  hard, 
calculating,  arid  shrewd,  uncouth,  irreverent,  and 
clumsy.  Let  those  who  would  be  acquainted  with 
the  best  sense  upon  this  vexed  and  vexing  ques- 
tion obtain  the  published  lectures  of  Mr.  Mann. 

In  further  illustration  of  this  organization  in 
society,  we  may  say  that  some  men  do  for  it  the 
service  of  an  eye  ;  others  of  a  brain  ;  others  again 
of  the  lungs ;  some  are  its  muscles,  some  its  feet, 
some  its  hands.  Historians  stand  for  the  faculty 
of  memory  in  the  large  human  nature  of  which  we 
are  a  part ;  poets  and  artists  its  imagination  ;  he- 
roes its  enthusiasm ;  mechanics  its  constructive- 
ness  ;  soldiers  its  brutal  bumps  behind  the  ears ; 
believers  its  reverence;  saints  its  love  and  hope. 
These,  and  all  the  functions  essential  to  the  grand 
man,  are  supplied  steadily  to  the  character  of 
society  by  the  new  nutriment  that  bubbles  up 
through  the  fresh  comers  into  the  world  to  restore 
the  wastes  of  death.  In  some  periods  one  faculty 
is  developed  more  than  another,  and  progress 
consists  in  the  strong  and  equable  development 
of  the  great  organs,  brain,  heart,  and  lungs,  which 
the  prominent  orders  represent ;  but  society  is 
never  without  all  these  organs  in  some  degree  of 
vigor.  And  we  cannot  reflect  too  reverently  on 
the  laws  of  this  permanence  established  by  Provi- 
dence. If  all  the  great  men  of  one  generation 
should  be  endowed,  as  some  of  them  are,  with 
despotic  tendencies  to  one  line  of  study,  — if  men 
were  not  made  to  be  equally  eminent  in  walks  so 


62  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

wide  apart  as  statesmanship,  science,  law,  me- 
chanical ingenuity,  the  pulpit,  mercantile  life,  — 
if  foe  a  single  half-century  there  should  be  a  dead 
level  of  capacity  in  every  line  of  power  but  one, 
how  would  civilization  surfer  !  To  use  the  perti- 
nent metaphor  of  St.  Paul  :  "  If  the  whole  body 
were  an  eye,  where  were  the  hearing?  if  the  whole 
were  hearing,  where  were  the  smelling?"  And 
the  conclusion  of  St.  Paul  is  the  one  we  are 
brought  to  by  considering  the  subtile  provisions 
for  the  welfare  of  society  :  "  But  now  hath  God 
set  the  members  every  one  of  them  in  the  body 
as  it  hath  pleased  him  •  that  there  should  be  no 
schism,  but  that  the  members  should  have  the 
same  care  one  for  another." 

Just  as  every  army  has  its  grade  of  officers, 
from  the  corporal  to  the  chief,  society  has  its  com- 
missioned men,  who  prevent  the  race  from  falling 
into  disorder  and  keep  it  in  a  regular  march. 
With  regard  to  labor  we  talk  of  a  law  of  demand 
and  supply  which  determines  how  many  men 
shall  be  miners,  iron-workers,  factory-hands,  shoe- 
makers, carpenters,  blacksmiths.  But  this  law 
does  not  account  for  the  great  poets,  discoverers, 
reformers,  and  constructive  thinkers  of  history. 
They  are  born,  not  made  by  circumstances.  And 
if  every  crisis  seems  to  have  its  great  man  ready, 
if  every  great  opportunity  seems  to  be  met  by 
some  man  that  fits  it,  it  is  not  because  the  crisis 
or  opportunity  makes  the  man,  but  provokes  him 
out,  that  he  may  show  himself  in  his  grand  pro- 


TJie  Laws  of  Disorder.  63 

portions  of  power,  as  God  made  him.  The  needs 
of  the  Hebrew  people  in  their  Egyptian  slavery 
were  answered  by  a  Moses  ;  but  was  it  those 
needs  that  wove  the  faculties  of  Moses  into  his 
frame,  fitting  him  to  be  their  deliverer  and  law- 
giver? Was  it  any  set  of  circumstances  that  we 
can  comprehend  which  stretched  the  musical 
nerves  of  David  upon  his  body,  or  kindled  in 
another  heart  the  enthusiastic  fire  of  a  Paul,  that 
has  warmed  the  air  of  the  world  ?  Was  it  by  the 
coarse  law  of  demand  and  supply  that  a  Colum- 
bus was  haunted  by  the  ghost  of  a  round  planet, 
at  the  time  when  the  New  World  was  needed 
for  the  interests  of  civilization,  or  that  a  Luther 
sprung  up  with  a  brain  and  energy  competent 
to  organize  a  new  movement  for  human  liberty  ? 
Can  we  tell  why  it  was  that  a  Shakespeare  rose 
from  the  crowd  of  boys  which  an  English  village 
bore,  or  a  Milton  started  up  to  refresh  the  re- 
ligious sense  with  the  sound  of  majestic  music 
and  the  sight  of  an  athletic  virtue  ?  Was  it  the 
necessities  of  our  country  that  built  the  grand 
architecture  of  Washington's  patriotism  ?  or,  rath- 
er, was  it  not  most  fortunate  for  us  that  Provi- 
dence did  not  suffer  the  crisis  to  come  without 
first  fashioning  a  nature  competent  to  be  its  rep- 
resentative and  guide  ?  And,  standing  in  the 
shadow  of  our  last  great  man's  departure,  should 
we  not  consider  whether  it  is  by  any  wisdom  that 
we  can  understand,  that  such  a  stately  intellect 
was  ordained  to  be  the  guest  of  that  massive 


64  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

brow,  that  such  a  stalwart  understanding  rose  up 
by  the  side  of  the  Constitution,  ready,  at  the  criti- 
cal period,  to  be  its  interpreter  and  defence,  and 
that  the  tongue  which  Nature  gave  him  was  made 
minister  of  an  eloquence  that  echoes  back  to  De- 
mosthenes ?  No  !  great  men  are  made  for  us, 
and  the  law  by  which  every  generation  supplies 
one  or  two  of  such  in  every  line  of  human  labor 
is  a  law  which  Providence  has  secretly  estab- 
lished and  which  is  sustained  for  our  welfare,  that 
truth  may  steadily  advance,  that  the  ranks  of  the 
race  may  always  have  their  competent  captains 
and  generals,  and  that  civilization  shall  not  stag- 
nate and  waste  away. 

In  regard  to  the  tastes  of  people  for  food,  there 
is  singular  uniformity  of  law  supporting  wide 
diversities  of  appetite.  Some  persons  would  n't 
touch  a  cabbage ;  to  others  an  onion  is  an  abom- 
ination ;  with  others  a  turnip  is  a  kind  of  produce 
that  produces  a  quality  which  the  word  represents 
upon  the  nose  ;  many  will  not  look  at  condiments 
and  spices  ;  and  there  are  those  to  whom  a  goose, 
or  a  leg  of  venison,  or  a  dish  of  eels,  or  a  rabbit,  or 
a  mess  of  pork  and  greens,  is  perfectly  repulsive. 
And  yet,  as  a  whole,  the  civilized  stomach  is  very 
catholic  ;  and  all  the  produce  of  the  fields,  from 
parsnips  up  to  peaches,  finds  a  ready  welcome, 
and  the  diversity  of  the  tastes  'keeps  commerce 
busy,  as  the  purveyor  of  appetite,  and  all  the 
tribes  of  the  earth  and  the  sea  that  are  eatable 
travel  and  swim  towards  the  larder  and  the  kitchen. 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  65 

The  different  races  have  the  bump  of  alimentive- 
ness  split  up  queerly  and  regularly  between  them  ; 
the  Hibernian  Celts,  with  a  little  assistance  from 
the  Dutch,  pay  their  respects  to  the  cabbages ; 
the  Saxons  attack  the  beef  and  mutton ;  the 
French  celebrate  the  creative  goodness  that  made 
onions  and  frogs ;  the  Chinese  pride  themselves 
on  rats  ;  the  Esquimaux  attend  to  all  the  waste 
whale-blubber  ;  Italians  rejoice  in  macaroni ;  and 
the  unsqueamish  army  of  beggars  devour  what 
they  can  get.  Statisticians  call  for  statistics.  I 
would  respectfully  suggest  to  them  this  : 

"  Jack  Sprat  could  eat  no  fat, 
His  wife  could  eat  no  lean  ; 
Betwixt  them  both  they  cleared  the  cloth, 
And  licked  the  platter  clean." 

In  any  family  of  eight  or  ten  we  shall  find  that 
tastes  are  related  to  the  roast  turkey  as  skilfully 
as  those  of  Mr.  Sprat  and  his  wife  were  bal- 
anced. There  are  so  many  that  love  white  meat, 
so  many  that  can  eat  nothing  but  dark  meat,  two 
that  prefer  a  wing,  two  that  lie  in  wait  for  the 
drumsticks,  and  as  surely  as  there  is  a  wish-bone 
will  there  be  a  demand  at  least  equal  to  the 
supply.  Now,  whether  we  conceive  the  turkey  as 
prefigured  for  the  family,  or  the  family  tastes  as 
an  after  arrangement,  the  order  is  equally  admi- 
rable, and  bears  ample  witness  to  the  prudence  of 
nature. 

In   riding   in  the   stage-coaches   also  in  New 
Hampshire,  among  the  mountains,  I  have  been 

E 


66  The  Laws  of  Disorder.  . 

compelled  to  notice  the  admirable  distribution  of 
characters  in  every  load  of  twenty-five  :  how  there 
are  always  sixteen  that  prefer  the  places  for  eight 
on  the  outside,  and  how  of  these  two  are  always 
clergymen  and  one  a  doctor,  one  has  travelled  in 
the  Alps  and  can  give  you  comparative  criti- 
cisms ;  one  is  a  grumbler  and  thinks  the  moun- 
tains humbugs,  puffed  up  by  hotel-keepers  and 
stage-proprietors  to  gull  the  public;  one  is  a 
punster,  and  one  a  Southerner ;  nine  and  a  baby 
that  could  not  ride  anywhere  but  on  the  inside 
seats ;  three  of  the  nine  that  can  ride  backwards 
without  discomfort ;  and  how  regularly  it  happens 
that  the  baby  is  gifted  with  a  taste  for  music,  and 
shows  its  lineage  from  Adam  by  its  crying  sin. 

Among  the  other  steady  relations  I  have  spoken 
of  as  belonging  to  society,  the  fact  may  be  men- 
tioned that  the  idiots  and  the  insane  are  in  regu- 
lar ratio  to  the  whole  population.  The  deaf  and 
dumb,  too,  maintain  a  strict  proportion  to  the  bulk 
of  society.  According  to  the  last  census  there 
were  9,717  deaf-mutes  in  the  United  States.  A 
careful  calculation  will  show  that  these  are  just 
about  enough  to  furnish  the  proper  number  of 
legislators  for  the  whole  country.  May  we  not 
guess  that  Providence  intends  that  this  unfortu- 
nate class  should  be  educated  to  be  our  repre- 
sentatives and  senators  ?  Then  we  should  have 
deliberative  assemblies.  No  speeches  for  Bun- 
combe, no  lobbying,  and  the  most  eloquent  man 
would  surely  be  he  that  should  make  the  best 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  67 

motions.  Our  feminine  reformers  insist  that 
things  will  not  go  right  till  ladies  are  elected  par- 
tially to  represent  the  nation,  which  would  relieve 
us  about  as  pouring  oil  on  a  fire  would  soothe  a 
conflagration ;  but  we  think  true  patriotism  will 
seriously  consider  whether  the  deaf  and  dumb  are 
not  born  to  be  our  lawmakers.  There  could  be, 
it  is  true,  no  Speaker  of  the  House,  but  we  should 
not  need  one,  for  there  would  be  no  speakers  in 
the  House.  Ruffianism  of  language  would  be 
avoided,  for  how  absurd  to  call  a  man  a  liar  by 
the  fingers ;  and  justice  would  be  more  likely  to 
be  done  to  the  great  interests  of  a  nation,  in  the 
solemn  silence  of  such  a  conclave,  than  it  is  now 
amid  the  general  chatter  which  is  intended,  not  to 
elucidate  the  subject,  but  to  fetch  an  echo  of  ap- 
plause from  home. 

If  we  reflect  upon  it  carefully,  we  shall  be 
struck  also,  I  think,  with  the  marvellous  secret 
and  constant  action  of  the  laws  which  superin- 
tend the  growth  of  national  life.  In  the  case  of 
every  individual  there  is  steady  development  of 
character  and  unity  of  experience  from  childhood 
to  old  age.  All  the  powers,  memory,  sensation, 
reason,  wit,  imagination,  conscience,  are  vitally 
welded  together  into  one  consciousness,  so  that 
often  the  sins  of  the  past  are  punished  in  the 
present,  and  the  rewards  of  goodness  are  received 
from  the  bright  hopes  which  the  blended  fancy 
and  conscience  paint  upon  the  future.  Now,  by 
a  law  of  which  this  is  only  a  miniature,  every 


68  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

nation  has  a  distinct  character  to  which  all  its 
individuals  contribute  and  which  successive  gen- 
erations help  to  develop.  Think  what  boundless 
personal  peculiarities  there  are  in  the  millions 
that  make  up  a  great  kingdom ;  and  yet  the  na- 
tional type  is  distinctly  marked  to  a  vivid  imagi- 
nation. The  qualities  of  the  Irish  character  re- 
main the  same  through  centuries ;  the  difference 
between  a  Frenchman  to-day  and  a  Gaul  of  two 
thousand  years  ago  is  a  difference  which  the 
polytechnic  school  and  the  dancing-master  make, 
that  is,  a  difference  of  polish,  not  of  substance  ; 
and  the  Jew  with  his  old  clothes  now  is  essen- 
tially the  Jew  of  Herod's  and  Pilate's  days.  How 
easily  we  typify  national  qualities,  and  make  our 
pictures  of  Brother  Jonathan,  John  Bull,  Johnny 
Crapeau,  and  the  Russian  Bear,  thus  proving  that 
each  empire  is  a  grand  man,  and  unites  all  the 
varieties  of  temperament  and  qualities  in  its  citi- 
zens into  a  constant  expression,  as  the  different 
elements  of  character  in  a  person  run  together 
into  a  distinct  and  constant  countenance !  A  re- 
cent physiognomist  has  called  attention  to  this 
fixity  of  national  types,  by  showing,  in  an  odd 
way,  that  different  national  faces  have  always  a 
marked  resemblance  to  certain  animals.  Thus, 
Prussians  resemble  cats,  Germans  look  like  lions 
(though  the  Hungarians  seem,  in  our  country  at 
least,  to  turn  most  easily  to  lions),  Chinamen 
favor  hogs,  Yankees  humanize  the  physiognomy 
of  bears,  and  Persians  have  the  likeness  of  pea- 
cocks entailed  upon  them. 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  69 

The  beneficent  results  of  this  constancy  of 
national  character  are  very  various.  Without  it 
there  would  be  no  stability  to  society,  no  moral 
order  in  civilization.  If  there  was  no  certainty 
that  the  next  generation  in  a  country  should  pos- 
sess essentially  the  same  qualities  with  their  fa- 
thers, if  the  Irish  might  produce  a  race  of  English 
temperaments,  and  France  give  birth  to  a  colony 
of  German  or  Italian  heads  and  hearts,  and  Amer- 
ica rear  a  race  of  stolid,  quiet,  ease-loving  China- 
men or  Turks,  with  no  go-ahead  infused  into  their 
blood,  of  course  history  would  be  like  a  succes- 
sion of  cross-readings  of  a  newspaper.  It  would 
be  exactly  as  if  men  might  sleep  away  their  char- 
acters and  moral  identity,  —  the  honest  man  at 
night  waking  up  a  scamp  in  the  morning,  the  cow- 
ard shifted  into  a  moral  hero,  the  thrifty  man  into 
a  loafer,  the  Hunker  into  a  furious  Abolitionist, 
and  the  cotton-planter  transmuted  into  an  enthu- 
siastic patron  of  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin." 

This  constancy  of  national  temperament  and 
character  shows  its  beneficent  influence  in  litera- 
ture. There  are  national  literatures,  just  as  there 
are  national  languages  and  peculiarities  of  feature 
and  expression.  The  English  imagination  and 
pathos,  the  French  keenness  and  brilliancy,  the 
Spanish  romance,  the  German  subtlety,  and  the 
Jewish  reverence  run  through  all  their  intellectual 
activity;  and  so  the  intellectual  world  has  consist- 
ency and  permanence,  the  literatures  of  nations 
being,  for  diversity  and  consequent  charm,  like  the 


70  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

conversation  of  a  circle  of  cultivated  gentlemen, — 
one  wise  and  sombre,  one  gay  and  witty,  one  filled 
with  sprightly  recollections  and  anecdote,  one 
scientific,  another  poetic,  this  one  religious,  that 
one  gloomy,  here  an  artist  and  there  a  sage. 

In  respect  of  literature,  as  a  general  thing  we 
may  say  that  there  are  statistics  of  genius :  the 
inventive  powers  come  first  to  maturity,  judgment 
ripens  more  slowly,  and  the  highest  dramatic  and 
poetic  capacities  find  their  perfection,  —  the  tragic 
from  thirty-five  to  forty,  and  the  comic,  which  de- 
mands clearer  insight  and  a  cooler  poise  of  the 
brain,  from  forty  to  fifty. 

There  seems  to  be  a  law,  too,  which  determines 
that  great  genius  shall  come  in  clusters  upon  the 
branches  of  national  history.  The  culminating 
periods  of  intellectual  life  in  Greece  were  the 
times  of  Pericles  a^d  Alexander.  In  Rome,  the 
century  of  which  Augustus  was  the  centre  bore 
the  ripest  shock  of  minds.  And  there  are  plenty 
of  modern  instances,  besides  the  era  of  the  great 
painters  and  the  age  of  Shakespeare,  to  show  that 
the  intellectual  soil  nourishes  rich  growths  and 
then  lies  fallow  for  an  interval.  But  all  this  is 
only  introductory  to  the  fact  that  each  nation  has 
a  literature  of  a  distinct  character. 

The  conclusions  we  should  reach  from  this  wide 
survey  are  very  important.  First,  society  is  belted 
by  law.  The  best  definition  of  Providence  is  con- 
stant and  beneficent  law,  and  when  we  see  how 
social  statistics  fall,  as  it  were,  into  order  and 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  71 

rhyme;  we  find  that  there  is  the  same  scientific 
proof  of  Providence  in  society  that  there  is  of  an 
organizing  and  controlling  hand  in  the  balanced 
harmonies  of  the  sky.  Some  persons  have  felt 
reluctance  to  dwell  upon  the  facts  which  the  sta- 
tisticians have  presented,  from  the  fear  that  they 
indorse  fatalism,  showing  that  man  is  a  tool  and 
a  puppet  But  they  do  not  add  any  important 
weight  to  the  argument  for  fatalism  which  logic 
is  able  to  frame  without  them.  They  only  show 
that  man  has  not  such  freedom  of  will  as  to  make 
society  perfectly  lawless  ;  they  show  that  the  Deity 
will  have  some  order  in  society  in  spite  of  sin,  and 
that  sin  itself,  as  in  the  case  of  the  regularity  of 
crimes  and  of  criminals  at  certain  ages,  will  ex- 
press itself  in  results  by  a  constant  and  terrific 
arithmetic. 

And  so  the  most  important  sequence  to  which 
our  survey  points  is  this  :  that  society  is  one  com- 
pact, organic,  living  thing,  that  the  laws  of  the 
world  treat  it  as  a  whole,  play  with  it  as  though 
it  were  a  person  morally  responsible,  and  appor- 
tion its  punishment  or  its  good  exactly  in  the  ratio 
of  its  fidelity  or  its  vice.  The  statistics  of  crime, 
ignorance,  mortality  by  pestilence,  blight  of  in- 
dustry by  war,  degeneracy  of  physical  power,  point 
back  to  a  certain  proportion  of  evil  in  the  heart 
of  the  nation.  Does  any  man  say  it  is  a  proof 
of  fatalism  that  there  are  so  many  thousands  of 
the  perishing  classes  steadily  rising  up  out  of  Bos- 
ton and  New  York  and  London,  keeping  a  fixed 


72  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

percentage  every  five  or  ten  or  twenty  years  ?  It  is 
no  more  a  proof  of  fatalism  than  the  fact  of  indi- 
vidual experience  is,  that  a  carousal  over  night 
surely  breeds  a  headache  in  the  morning,  or  that 
the  bite  of  a  viper  corrupts  the  blood  and  makes 
the  limb  swell.  The  great  question  is,  Can  the 
nation  reduce  or  rid  itself  of  the  causes  whose 
results  are  ciphered  out  with  such  permanent  con- 
sistency? Introduce  ten  per  cent  more  of  clown- 
principle  into  Boston  and  Ne\v  York,  and  see  how 
the  annals  of  Broad  Street  and  the  Five  Points,  and 
the  reports  of  ignorance  and  crime,  will  acknowl- 
edge this  new  element.  The  fidelity  of  society 
as  well  as  its  infidelity  will  reach  the  statistician's 
tables  at  last.  The  great  lesson  of  our  subject  is 
that  we  cannot  escape  law,  and  also  that  we  can 
use  law.  Every  community,  every  state,  every 
empire,  is  in  the  coil  of  moral  principles  as  surely 
as  every  man  is,  as  surely  as  every  constellation  is 
played  with  by  the  law  of  gravity  with  as  much 
certainty  and  ease  as  the  pebble.  Truth  works 
on  a  large  scale  just  as  rigidly  as  on  a  small  one, 
and  the  algebra  of  social  order  coldly  demon- 
strates to  the  legislator  and  the  statesman  what 
the  prophet  chants  in  their  ears,  that  wrong  prin- 
ciples, false  laws,  popular  Mammon  worship,  in- 
difference to  neighborly  welfare,  are  terrible  reali- 
ties, and  break  out  on  the  body  politic  in  crimes, 
ignorance,  jails,  insane  asylums,  pest-houses,  de- 
moralization, and  at  last  loss  of  liberty  and  death. 
Men  are  generally  and  foolishly  sceptical  as  to 


TJie  Laws  of  Disorder.  73 

the  certain  play  of  moral  causes  and  the  reality 
of  moral  laws.  They  imagine  that  the  intellectual 
and  ethical  domain,  everything  that  belongs  to  the 
unseen  sphere  of  social  character,  is  a  region  of 
chance  and  accidents,  or  that  what  forces  work 
there  work  helter-skelter,  without  the  possibility 
of  foresight  or  control.  But  everything  visible  in 
society  is  the  token  of  invisible  essences,  and  the 
regularity  of  statistics  only  betrays  the  surety  of 
spiritual  as  well  as  material  agencies  in  their  obe- 
dience to  law,  and  thus  the  possibility  of  control- 
ling them.  Celtic  institutions  and  statistics  differ 
from  the  Saxon  because  the  qualities  of  character 
differ.  Whether  the  price  of  grain  rise  in  a  com- 
munity of  poorly  paid  labor,  or  the  opportunities 
of  education  be  reduced,  whether  a  material  or  a 
moral  spring  be  touched,  the  effect  is  equally  cer- 
tain and  calculable  :  crime  will  increase  and  public 
suffering  will  ensue.  There  is  no  more  uncer- 
tainty about  moral  causes  than  about  physical  ones. 
The  man  who  can  put  up  a  new  school  house 
where  one  was  not  may  be  as  sure  that  he  bene- 
fits his  race  and  abates  the  percentage  of  crime 
as  if  he  could  directly  alter  the  character  of  a 
town  by  a  word,  or  erase  with  his  pen  some  of  the 
statistics  of  guilt.  The  statesman  of  commanding 
influence  who  utters  a  base  sentiment  in  the  Sen- 
ate-House, or  publishes  it  from  the  Cabinet,  may 
be  as  sure  that  he  contributes  to  the  disorganiza- 
tion of  his  country  as  if  his  pen  had  immediately 
added  to  the  arithmetic  of  public  disease.  The 
4 


74  The  Laws  of  ^Disorder. 

laws  of  moral  gravitation  and  moral  chemistry  have 
no  more  caprice,  and  may  be  relied  on  as  serenely, 
as  the  forces  of  the  firmament  and  the  crucible. 

And  so  we  are  told  with  all  the  precision  and 
coolness  of  science  that,  a  nation  being  one  living 
and  responsible  thing,  having  its  roots  in  the  past 
and  its  hopes  in  the  future,  its  character  is  the 
most  important  element  in  relation  to  its  strength 
and  permanence.  As  there  is  a  character  housed 
in  every  human  frame,  so  there  is  a  character 
enshrined  in  every  nation,  to  which  its  rising  gen- 
erations contribute.  Its  nobility  and  greatness 
depend  no  more  on  its  prosperity,  wealth,  and 
strength  than  the  nobility  of  a  man  depends  on 
the  size  of  his  body,  the  acres  he  owns,  and  the 
gold  he  has  at  command.  A  ruffian  may  have 
such  claims  to  greatness  as  these  ;  and  a  nation 
having  these,  and  yet  guided  by  no  feelings  of 
honor  and  love  of  right,  may  be  only  a  majestic, 
rich,  and  titled  savage.  It  is  character  that  gives 
nobleness;  and  only  as  a  nation  is  pervaded  by 
the  moral  elements  which  make  up  worthy  char- 
acter will  its  statistics  show  progress  towards 
permanent  power,  and  history  draw  its  portrait 
as  a  benefactor  of  civilization. 

Ah  !  how  impressive  and  grand  does  history 
seem  when  we  think  that  every  country  is  a  mighty 
pedestal  lifting  up  a  national  figure  symbolic  of 
the  character,  the  prospects,  and  the  perils  of  the 
people  that  dwell  on  its  domain  !  The  surface  of 
the  world,  to  the  imaginative  eye,  is  dotted  with 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  75 

these  representative  forms.  See  the  genius  of  old 
Rome  stand  on  the  eminence  of  an  all-shadowy 
throne,  with  grim  and  cruel  eyes,  and  traces  of 
the  vices  that  rotted  its  sinewy  heart.  See  Egypt 
on  its  pyramid,  with  the  massive  voluptuousness 
in  its  visage,  incarnating  the  scourge  and  doom 
of  its  millions  ;  Assyria,  nodding  in  sottishness 
on  the  high  and  hasty  platform  of  its  power, 
and  dropping  its  flashy  sceptre  from  bloated  and 
nerveless  hands ;  Greece,  lifting  the  enervated 
beauty  of  its  face,  as  of  some  shameless  and  prof- 
ligate Apollo,  from  its  sculptured  eminence  over- 
looking the  ^Egean  sea  ;  swarthy  Hindostan,  lost 
in  sodden  reveries  over  the  vast  volume  of  its  cos- 
mogonies ;  China,  with  the  swinish  cunning  of  her 
eyes,  showing  off,  from  her  broad  plateau,  the  un- 
tattered  robe  of  her  customs  ;  Arabia,  overlooking 
her  deserts  with  a  face  ploughed  by  the  passions, 
long  since  spent,  that  once  ravaged  the  civilized 
world  ;  decrepit  Spain,  with  the  old  fire  of  her 
romance  gleaming  out,  now  and  then,  over  her 
impoverished  and  seedy  dress  ;  brilliant  France, 
with  sparkling  eye,  blending  into  one  expression 
the  intellectual  vivacity  of  her  Laplaces  and  Ra- 
cines,  and  the  volatile,  graceful  levity  of  dancing- 
masters  and  grisettes ;  Italy,  lifting  from  the  ancient 
throne  of  the  Caesars  her  manacled,  delicate  hands 
that  once  left  the  Madonna  upon  canvas,  and 
"  rounded  Peter's  dome " ;  Austria,  rooted  on  a 
pedestal  that  crushes  noble  nations,  and  insulting 
the  sky  with  the  depraved  duplicity  of  her  tyranny 


76  The  Laws  of  Disorder. 

and  arrogance  ;  the  magnetic  North,  gazing  from 
her  throne  of  snow,  bound  about  the  brows  with 
the  grotesque  and  frosty  mythology  of  Iceland  ; 
dignified  and  stately  England,  with  haughty  brow 
and  stubborn  breast  and  manly  mind,  wearing  a 
look  that  interweaves  the  genius  of  Newton,  Watt, 
and  Shakespeare,  but  with  a  heart  not  softened  yet 
enough  towards  the  chronic  miseries  of  her  sub- 
jects,—  look  at  these  figures  with  their  various 
visages  and  various  lessons,  and  then  raise  the 
question  to  your  fancy,  In  what  guise  shall  the 
incarnate  genius  of  our  own  land  stand  before  the 
centuries,  on  the  structure  that  represents  the  lati- 
tudes from  Aroostook  to  the  Golden  Coast,  and 
the  zones  from  Lake  Superior  to  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico  ? 

Shall  her  policy  and  public  spirit  be  such  that 
she  shall  stand  out  on  that  eminence  with  a  shrewd, 
cold  eye,  bespeaking  idolatrous  quest  of  money, 
and  a  robber's  avarice  for  another's  land,  with  a 
chain  in  her  left  hand  that  fetters  three  millions 
of  hopeless  bondmen,  and  her  right  pointing  con- 
tinually to  that  dark  spot  in  a  vast  bond  which 
promises  to  return  the  fugitive  ?  There  is  danger 
of  such  a  destiny  for  the  soul  of  our  country ;  and 
what  a  maturity  were  that  for  the  infant  form  that 
was  born  on  Plymouth  Rock,  baptized  to  freedom 
by  the  cold  ocean  spray,  and  cradled  in  reverence 
and  prayers ! 

Should  she  not  rather  rise  on  her  pedestal 
among  the  nations,  as  a  glorious  statue  with  the 


The  Laws  of  Disorder.  77 

unrolled  declaration  of  Independence  expressing 
her  steady  enthusiasm  for  liberty,  and  her  interdict 
of  bondage  for  her  unstained  soil,  —  a  chart  that 
has  on  it  a  dotted  home  and  welcome  for  every 
wanderer  from  beyond  the  sea,  and  a  countenance 
fresh  as  the  airs  of  her  North,  a  heart  warm  as  the 
sunshine  of  her  South,  an  ambition  for  good  vast 
as  the  enterprise  of  her  East,  and  a  hope  broad  and 
generous  as  the  prairies  of  her  West  ?  Is  not  this 
the  representative  character  we  desire  for  our 
blessed  land  ?  He  is  the  statesmen,  they  are  the 
patriots,  who  strive  to  have  it  realized,  and  who 
believe  that  the  laws  which  defeat  disorder  and 
prevent  decay  are  the  laws  of  righteousness  and 
liberty. 

1852. 


III. 

SOCKATES. 

THE  subject  of  my  discourse  is  Socrates. 
Though  his  name  is  familiar  to  human 
lips  as  the  representative  of  the  highest  spirit  of 
duty,  yet  little  is  generally  known  of  his  life  and 
character.  His  spiritual  physiognomy  is  not 
clearly  seen  amid  the  cloudy  sanctity  which  en- 
velops him  in  the  reverential  regard  of  men.  It 
is  known  or  believed  that  he  was  a  preacher  of 
pure  morals,  and  a  man  of  invincible  purity  of 
life,  —  a  light  walking  in  darkness,  —  perhaps  the 
clearest  light  that  brightened  -the  ante-Christian 
years  ;  still  the  man  is  but  feebly  perceived  by 
most  of  those  who  revere  him  as  an  ethical 
teacher. 

Socrates  was  born  in  Athens  in  the  year  468 
B.C.,  twelve  years  after  the  battle  of  Salamis.  His 
parents  were  poor,  his  father  an  ordinary  sculp- 
tor named  Sophroniscus.  Nothing  more  than  the 
common  training  of  an  Athenian  lad  was  given  to 
him  in  early  life.  This,  however,  was  not  all  his 
education.  We  must  not  forget  that  his  years  fell 
in  the  period  when  the  intellect  of  his  countrymen 
was  in  the  very  bloom  of  its  first  enthusiasm,  and 


Socrates.  79 

rejoiced  in  the  fulness  of  creative  life  ;  for  it  was 
when  the  tragedies  of^Eschylus  and  Sophocles 
were  frightening  and  fascinating  their  first  audi- 
tors, and  the  chisel  of  Phidias  cut  the  white  rock 
from  Pentelicus  as  though  it  were  snow,  and  Peri- 
cles was  fashioning  the  Athenian  will  to  his  pur- 
poses by  his  eloquence.  Athens,  through  its  arts, 
was  fast  becoming  a  sort  of  play-ground  of  Apollo, 
and  Socrates,  amid  the  general  worship  of  beauty, 
was  apprenticed  as  a  sculptor.  We  know  noth- 
ing of  him  except  that  he  worked  at  his  profes- 
sion till  he  was  about  thirty-five,  when  we  find 
that  he  deliberately  threw  down  his  tools,  and 
determined  to  be  the  moral  schoolmaster  of  the 
most  intellectual  city  of  the  world. 

Socrates  is  classed  among  philosophers  ;  yet 
his  first  movement  in  the  mental  world  was  a  pro- 
test against  all  that  was  called  philosophy  in  his 
time.  He  had  read  all  that  the  masters  of  Gre- 
cian thought  before  his  day  had  written,  and  found 
it  profitless.  He  found  their  pages  busy  with 
theories  about  the  origin  of  the  world,  the  way  in 
which  it  had  grown  to  its  present  form,  and  the 
nature  of  God.  One  said  the  earth  came  up  from 
a  waste  of  water.  Another  maintained  that  every- 
thing solid  is  compressed  air.  A  third  contended 
that  it  is  plain  enough  the  globe  is  an  animal, 
that  the  stars  are  its  gills  through  which  it  takes 
in  and  puffs  out  its  breath,  while  the  tides  meas- 
ure the  heave  and  fall  of  its  huge  chest.  Again 
it  was  guessed  that  mud  was  the  basis  of  all  being, 


8o  Socrates. 

which  was  quickened  by  the  sun's  heat  to  produce 
plants,  animals,  and  men.  Parmenides  affirmed 
that  the  world  is  a  proportional  mixture  of  light 
and  darkness.  Democritus  showed  that  all  the 
differences  of  form  and  function  were  caused  by 
different  assortments  of  the  imperceptible  atoms 
of  which  everything  is  made  ;  and  Heraclitus 
asserted  that  fire  is  the  primal  life  element,  that 
anything  is  good  in  proportion  to  its  dryness.  In 
proportion  to  a  man's  goodness  his  soul  became 
dry.  He  contended  that  a  dissipated  man  had 
a  moist  soul,  so  that  our  popular  saying  that  a 
drunkard  is  "  a  soaker,"  may  be  a  bowlder  from 
the  old  Greek  philosophy. 

What  was  called  philosophy  in  Greece  before 
Socrates  was  most  tedious  and  fruitless  stuff,  —  a 
continent  of  speculation  and  fantastically  chang- 
ing mist-clouds,  having  no  basis,  guided  by  no 
law,  leading  to.  no  result.  Socrates  saw  it,  and 
said  so.  He  marvelled  that  none  of  the  great 
thinkers  had  taken  up  the  question  which  the 
soul  of  man  suggests.  The  great  region  of  in- 
quiry and  interest  is  not  the  world  of  nature,  but 
human  nature.  What  is  man  here  for  ?  What  is 
the  law  of  happiness  ?  Where  is  the  path  of  no- 
bleness and  peace  ?  What  is  the  foundation  of 
the  law  of  duty  ?  These  themes  Socrates  did  not 
find  treated  in  the  books  of  the  schools,  and,  at 
about  the  maturity  of  his  manhood,  he  determined 
to  impress  upon  his  countrymen  the  importance 
of  one  sentence,  "  Know  thyself." 


Socrates.  8 1 

And  here  we  are  arrested  by  the  fact  that  Soc- 
rates was  far  in  advance  of  our  own  time  as  well 
as  of  his  contemporaries  in  his  conviction  that  it  is 
better  to  study  our  own  nature  than  to  be  turned 
from  all  interest  in  it  by  ambition  to  know  the  laws 
of  the  physical  universe.  He  contended  that  men 
could  arrive  at  more  certain  as  well  as  more  val- 
uable knowledge  by  studying  their  own  experience 
and  powers  than  by  investigating  the  world  of 
matter.  "  It  is  all  guess-work,"  he  said,  "  these  con- 
clusions about  what  the  earth  is  made  of,  and  how 
it  was  produced.  You  may  speculate  about  the 
floor  of  the  firmament,  and  what  the  stars  are,  and 
how  the  winds  blow,  and  whether  the  globe  is  like 
a  colossal  turtle  and  paddles  around  the  ether, 
but  you  cannot  know  anything  about  it.  But 
about  ourselves  we  can  learn  something.  We  can 
know  what  virtue  is,  where  peace  may  be  found, 
whether  there  is  such  a  thing  as  justice,  as  truth, 
and  whether  man  was  made  for  a  higher  walk  and 
destiny  than  a  beaver  and  a  goat." 

Very  few  of  us  really  believe  that  now.  Few 
acknowledge  that  thoughts  are  as  substantial  as 
things,  that  a  feeling  is  as  real  as  a  paving-stone, 
that  the  soul  is  a  congeries  of  actual  forces  as 
truly  as  the  body  is,  that  a  moral  principle  is  as 
persistent  and  fatal  a  thing  as  a  chemical  agent, 
and  that,  in  the  deeps  of  the  mind  and  in  society, 
laws  are  ever  at  work  as  constant  and  stem  as 
those  which  spin  the  planets  and  heave  the  sea 
and  poise  the  firmaments.  The  majority  of  think' 
4*  F 


82  Socrates. 

ing  men  still  practically  believe  that  the  track  of 
certain  knowledge  is  in  the  visible  and  solid  world. 
The  stars,  the  rivers,  the  rocks,  they  think  afford 
material  of  science,  but  the  soul  is  a  region  of  haze 
and  moonbeams,  the  law  of  right  is  a  matter  which 
none  of  us  can  be  sure  about,  and  conscience  a 
bodiless  echo  of  the  passions  and  desires  which 
cannot  safely  be  relied  upon. 

If  this  is  so,  our  bones  are  the  noblest  part  of  us, 
and  religion,  not  being  a  certainty,  is  "  a  mockery 
and  a  horror."  Its  glories  are  the  fancies  of  a 
dream,  its  terrors  the  figments  of  a  nightmare. 
Socrates  came  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was  not 
so.  He  felt  assured  that  the  mystery  in  which 
the  world  floats  is  more  real  than  the  earth's  ribs  ; 
that  the  stone  which  his  chisel  chipped  was  less 
substantial  than  the  soul  in  every  human  form ;  and 
that  the  beauty  which  his  cunning  carved  into  the 
block  was  less  charming  and  permanent  than  the 
beauty  of  truth,  temperance,  and  holiness,  which 
faith  and  culture  could  leave  upon  the  invisible 
essence  of  every  man.  He  therefore  resolved  to 
abandon  the  lower  for  the  higher  art  of  sculpture, 
and  instead  of  being  an  artist  in  marble  to  be  a 
fashioner  of  men.' 

From  an  obscure  workman  he  suddenly  became 
a  missionary.  We  must  not  think  of  him  as  in 
any  technical  and  stately  sense  a  philosopher. 
He  never  wrote  a  book ;  he  spent  little  time  in 
abstract  thought ;  he  was  not  a  student.  He  was 
a  home-missionary.  His  interest  was  in  men, 


their  occupation,  trials,  and  character, 
of  instruction  and  influence  was  conversation, 
the  street,  the  shop,  the  market-place,  or  the 
change  was  his  school.  He  meant  to  be  to  his 
townsmen,  as  he  himself  said,  "  like  a  gadfly  to  a 
strong  and  sluggish  horse,"  buzzing  about  him 
continually,  and  stinging  him  from  his  laziness  to 
a  brisk  and  healthy  trot. 

As  he  was  not  a  philosopher  by  occupation  and 
methods,  neither  was  he  so  in  the  character  of  his 
mind,  and  still  less  in  his  appearance.  Take  him 
as  a  whole,  in  essence  and  appearance,  Socrates 
was  a  compound  of  mystic,  logician,  and  buffoon. 

A  spirit  fellow  with  the  Quakers  and  Soofes 
inhabited  that  grotesque  frame.  In  this  respect 
also  he  was  not  a  philosopher,  but  a  seer  and 
a  saint.  He  did  not  spend  his  time  in  inves- 
tigating truth ;  he  believed  it  by  the  assurance 
of  an  inward  witness  ;  he  saw  it  and  worshipped 
it.  When  he  left  the  sculptor's  shop  he  took  up 
his  new  employment  with  the  consciousness  of  a 
heavenly  call ;  he  boasted  of  a  divine  commission, 
and  relied  on  spiritual  help.  "  This  duty,"  said 
he,  "  has  been  enjoined  me  by  the  Deity  through 
oracles  and  dreams,  and  in  every  mode  by  which 
any  Divine  decree  has  ever  enjoined  anything  to 
man  to  do." 

He  believed  in  supernatural  influences,  in  an- 
swers to  prayer,  in  visions,  and  in  divination.  He 
always  insisted  that  from  boyhood  he  had  been 
conscious  of  Divine  warnings  in  his  own  nature,  — 


Socrates. 


a  sort  of  Rochester  rappings  in  his  bosom, — which 
he  revered,  and  obeyed  without  hesitation.  They 
dissuaded  him,  he  said,  when  a  course  would  be 
very  wrong,  but  gave  no  positive  counsels.  If  a 
youth  desired  to  study  under  his  guidance,  if  a 
journey  was  contemplated,  if  a  thought  was  about 
to  be  expressed,  and  the  inward  tick  was  felj;,  he 
forbade  the  youth  to  approach  him,  he  relinquished 
the  journey,  he  smothered  the  thought.  Some- 
times he  was  led  to  utter  prophecies,  which  his 
friends  say  never  failed  of  fulfilment. 

And  yet,  unlike  other  mystics,  he  was  a  logician. 
A  man  of  severer  methods  never  lived.  He  had 
a  prophet's  flaming  heart,  and  he  had  a  brain  of 
ice.  He  laid  gas-pipes  as  systematically  as  Cal- 
vin could  for  his  Quaker  light.  Nothing  could 
baffle  or  confuse  him.  As  a  contemporary  said 
of  him,  he  could  track  a  principle  in  all  its 
windings  "  like  a  Lyconian  hound."  He  would 
hold  a  thought  and  inspect  it  as  a  mineralogist  ex- 
amines a  crystal.  The  symmetry  or  inconsistency 
of  a  thing  he  w^ould  see  as  quickly  and  keenly  as 
an  artist  appreciates  the  proportions  of  a  statue. 
He  would  untwist  the  elements  of  a  judgment  as 
an  expert  strips  off  the  layers  of  mica.  Thoughts 
were  things  in  his  grasp.  /. 

Here  lies  the  marvellous  originality  and  power 
of  his  genius,  that  he  was  a  saint  in  his  own  con- 
tact with  truth,  and  a  logician  in  his  communica- 
tion of  it  to  others.  He  always  conversed  with 
men,  tried  to  make  them  see  the  importance  of 


Socrates.  85 

thinking  accurately,  linked  question  to  question, 
till  he  drew  out  from  his  interlocutor  his  funda- 
mental faith,  or,  by  the  contradictions  he  led  the 
poor  man  into,  showed  that  he  had  no  fundamental 
faith,  and  then  advised  him  to  acquire  some  prin- 
ciple of  action  that  he  could  live  by,  that  would 
stand  the  test  of  argument.  He  never  harangued 
or  grew  eloquent,  but  analyzed,  disputed,  and  dis- 
cussed, —  always  with  the  view  of  getting  down  to 
some  rocky  certainty  that  would  bear  the  weight 
of  the  understanding  and  afford  a  substratum  for 
the  life.  The  prophet's  heated  utterance  he  dis- 
carded, but  put  on  the  missionary  robes  to  con- 
vince his  fellows  that  virtue  is  truth,  and  that  noth- 
ing else  will  stand  the  strain  of  inquiry  and  logic. 
Therefore  be  sure  of  the  foundation  of  your  life. 
Know  why  you  live  as  you  do.  Be  ready  to  give 
a  reason  for  it.  Do  not,  in  such  a  matter  as  life, 
build  on  opinion  or  custom,  or  what  you  guess  is 
true.  Make  it  a  matter  of  certainty  and  science. 
Do  not  one  hour  obey  a  virtuous  impulse,  and  the 
next  a  caprice  or  a  passion.  Above  all  things, 
make  your  life  consistent.  If  you  know  at  any 
time  that  virtue  is  highest  and  true,  enthrone  it 
ever  after ;  follow  it  in  all  things.  Else  your  con- 
duct will  be  a  miserable  patchwork  and  discord. 

And  this  was  the  principle  he  went  by  in  deal- 
ing with  men  and  instructing  them.  All  truth  is 
kindred,  and  so  clear  thinking  is  consistent  with 
holiness  and  leads  to  it,  while  inaccurate  thinking 
on  any  subject  is  morally  dangerous,  and  an  un- 


86  Socrates. 

certainty  or  falsehood  in  the  intellect  might  at  last 
be  found  to  be  the  "  apex  of  hell."  Therefore  he 
determined  to  benefit  the  Athenians  by  testing 
their  thought,  by  making  them  appreciate  the 
moral  truth  which  they  partially  believed,  and  show- 
ing them  that,  where  the  soul  has  no  moral  rev- 
erence and  certainty,  the  life  is  based  on  quicksand 
and  marsh. 

He  went  into  the  Athenian  streets  as  an  in- 
quirer after  truth.  So  far  from  writing  anything, 
or  assuming  to  teach  a  system  of  truth,  he  pre- 
tended not  to  know  anything,  to  be  a  thirsty  seeker 
of  the  highest  knowledge.  All  that  he  claimed 
ability  for  was  to  detect  nonsense.  "I  create 
nothing,"  said  he  ;  "I  am  only  an  accoucheur  of 
the  mind.  If  possible  I  will  assist  the  birth  of 
opinions  in  you,  and  choke  them  if  they  look  mon- 
strous, but  do  not  ask  me  to  teach  anything  di- 
rectly ;  I  am  a  learner,  and  the  humblest  of  all." 

Most  persons,  however,  found  his  ignorance 
more  tough  to  deal  with  than  the  wisest  man's 
knowledge.  If  he  fell  in  with  an  atheist,  his  ques- 
tions brought  the  argument  from  design  into  such 
splendid  prominence  and  concentrated  strength 
that  we  imagine  it  is  Paley's  pages  we  are  read- 
ing, and  not  a  heathen  Greek,  and  the  climax  is 
reached  in  a  query  like  this  :  "  Seeing  thou  thy- 
self, Aristodemus,  a  small  and  dependent  part  of 
the  extended  earth,  art  conscious  of  reason  and 
intelligence,  supposest  thou  there  is  no  intelligence 
elsewhere  in  the  universe  ?  " 


Socrates.  87 

If  he  found  a  man  that  did  not  worship,  he 
began  a  conversation  which  rose  to  such  a  height 
that  he  assented  to  the  conclusion  of  Socrates  : 
"  Piety  alone  fits,  the  soul  for  the  communication 
of  Divine  secrets  ;  and  no  others  reach  them  but 
those  who  consult,  adore,  and  obey  the  Deity." 

If  he  met  a  voluptuary,  his  logic  riddled  the  V. 
theory  of  pleasure,  and  set  in  clear  relief  the  folly 
of  tampering  with  the  laws  of  spiritual  health  ; 
with  the  rich  he  unveiled  the  truth  that  the  soul's 
growth  is  worth  more  than  the  wealth  of  Croesus 
and  the  power  of  "  the  great  king  "  ;  talking 
with  rulers,  the  conversation  would  lead  at  last  to 
the  fact,  that  to  do  injustice  is  worse  than  to  suf- 
fer it ;  and  at  feast-parties  he  would  contrive  to 
intersperse  the  fun  and  laughter  with  questions  or 
stories  about  "  spiritual  love  and  eternal  beauty." 
It  will  be  clearly  seen,  as  we  advance,  that  the 
grotesque  appearance  of  Socrates  was  a  symbol  of 
the  homeliness  and  ludicrous  cast  of  his  illustra- 
tions and  imagery.  Any  facts  that  could  be  strung 
upon  a  moral  law,  or  made  to  reveal  or  suggest  a  re- 
ligious truth,  however  common  or  coarse,  he  would 
press  into  his  service.  To  the  mystic  insight  of 
Coleridge,  and  the  burly  understanding  of  Dr. 
Johnson,  he  joined  the  shrewd  Yankee  sense  of 
Franklin.  He  could  draw  illustrations  for  his 
highest  themes  from  the  kitchen  as  well  as  from 
the  Iliad  and  the  -  religious  myths.  Skimmers 
and  soup-pans  were  hieroglyphs  of  truth  and 
holiness  as  well  as  poetic  goddesses  and  fictions 
of  Elysium. 


88  Socrates. 

•It  is  chiefly  as  a  pure  religious  thinker  and 
a  moral  teacher  that  Socrates  is  known  to  the 
majority  of  persons  now,  and  in  the  popular  im- 
agination he  is  conceived  as  a  lofty,  dignified 
personage,  with  a  severe  and  majestic  presence 
and  a  bearing  solemn  to  the  verge  of  being  tragi- 
cal. There  is,  probably,  no  great  character  of 
history  from  whom  an  accurate  acquaintance 
chips  so  clean  the  mythic  burr  and  halo  of  gen- 
eral report.  He  was  truly  no  saint  in  appear- 
ance, and  he  had  no  clerical  or  prophetic  method 
or  demeanor,  and  made  no  impression  upon  the 
beholder  of  Athenian  polish,  politeness,  or  grace. 
His  head  was  as  round  as  a  pumpkin;  he  was 
goggle-eyed,  and  was  debtor  to  nature  for  that 
slight  cast  or  inequality  of  axis  known  as  an  in- 
teresting squint.  "  Your  eyes  see  only  in  a  direct 
line,"  said  he,  "  but  I  can  look  not  only  directly 
forward  but  sideways,  too,  the  eyes  being  seated 
on  a  kind  of  ridge  in  my  head,  and  starting  out." 
His  nose  was  short,  flat,  and  snub,  and  the  nos- 
trils were  wide  and  turned  up,  —  being  more  use- 
ful on  that  account,  as  he  said,  since  they  were 
"able  to  receive  smells  that  come  from  every 
part,  both  above  and  below."  His  mouth  was 
wide  and  his  lips  thick,  which  he  "  thought  might 
be  envied  by  young  men,  since  kisses,  with  such 
a  liberal  application,  would,  as  he  contended,  be 
more  luscious  and  sweet."  He  had  a  rich  way, 
too,  when  he  had  hooked  a  man  in  argument, 
or  was  saying  something  rather  sly,  of  holding 


Socrates.  89 

his  head  still,  and  turning  his  eyes  among  the 
company,  —  a  habit  which  his  contemporaries 
compared  to  the  way  a  bull  glares  around  him 
with  his  head  down.  His  form  would  have  been 
more  classic  and  befitting  a  philosopher,  if  his 
neck  had  not  been  quite  so  chunky,  and  if  he 
had  not  manifested  something  above  the  canoni- 
cal corpulence  of  an  alderman.  The  most  rigid 
temperance  of  diet  and  rigor  of  bodily  discipline 
did  not  avail  to  reconcile  his  moral  temperament 
and  his  physique.  He  even  danced  at  home  in 
private,  with  the  hope  to  disenchant  his  frame  of 
its  fleshy  encumbrance  ;  but  to  little  purpose. 
Nature  had  determined  to  intimate  in  his  consti- 
tution a  cross  between  a  Brahmin  and  a  Satyr. 

The  information  is  preserved  for  us  that  he 
had  one  pair  of  dress-shoes  that  lasted  him  for 
life,  —  a  story  we  may  well  believe,  since  history 
has  recorded  no  instance  of  his  wearing  them. 
Winter  and  summer,  his  custom  was  to  go  bare- 
footed, and  it  was,  moreover,  with  a  slouching 
gait  and  a  very  seedy  dress  that  the  son  of  So- 
phroniscus  roamed  about  Athens  in  his  taberna- 
cle of  clay.  He  has  improved  a  little  in  respect 
of  dress  during  the  last  two  thousand  years, 
though  his  style  is  still  somewhat  eccentric,  for  in 
some  of  the  spiritual  communications  with  which 
our  times  are  so  favored,  Socrates  has  revealed 
himself  as  a  tall,  middle-aged  man,  dressed  with 
striped  coarse  trousers,  very  loose  at  the  top  and 
tight  near  the  feet,  and  a  kind  of  frock  open  in 
the  front  and  without  sleeves. 


go  Socrates. 

But  though  he  was  not  a  model  Greek  in  out- 
ward symmetry,  he  was  a  perfect  athlete  in  bod- 
ily vigor  and  power  of  endurance.  Underneath 
his  dissolute-looking  flesh  were  thews  of  brass, 
muscles  of  oak,  and  sinews  of  steel.  He  inured 
himself  to  hardships  as  a  duty,  in  order  to  perfect 
his  body  as  a  gift  of  Providence  and  an  instru- 
ment of  the  mind.  Sleep  he  never  needed  if 
good  conversation  was  to  be  had.  Report  goes, 
that  during  the  terrible  plague  of  Athens,  although 
he  never  left  the  city,  he  was  the  only  inhabitant 
that  wholly  escaped  infection.  Twice  the  tough- 
ness of  his  frame  was  proved  in  the  hardships 
of  the  camp  and  the  fatigues  of  battle.  When 
about  forty,  he  was  drafted  for  a  winter  campaign 
in  Thrace.  The  army,  at  one  time,  was  short 
of  provisions,  but  hunger  did  n't  trouble  him. 
Plenty  returned,  but  he  escaped  dyspepsia.  To- 
tal abstinence  societies  had  not  then  been 
formed,  and  even  philosophers  were  not  expected 
to  be  Washingtonians.  On  one  or  two  occasions, 
when  compelled  by  good-fellowship  to  drink  with 
his  young  comrades,  who  were  very  fond  of  him, 
so  tough  was  his  brain  he  might  have  used  the 
words  of  Lady  Macbeth,  as  he  surveyed  the  re^ 
suit,  —  "  that  which  hath  made  them  drunk,  hath 
made  me  bold." 

To  the  Athenian  frame  a  Thracian  winter  would 
be  something  like  the  pleasure  which  a  Carolinian 
planter  would  enjoy  among  a  camping  party  in 
the  Penobscot  lumber-lands  during  January.  But 


Socrates.  9 1 

while  his  companions  just  ventured  from  their 
tents,  wrapped  carefully,  with  hair-skins  around 
their  legs  and  fleeced  sandals  on  their  feet,  they 
would  get  a  hearty  hail  from  the  dialectic  corpo- 
ral, scantily  covered  with  his  single  threadbare 
summer  robe,  and  walking  barefooted  on  the  ice. 
It  was  on  the  expedition  to  Potidara,  also,  that 
he  surprised  the  camp  by  standing  for  twenty-four 
hours  motionless,  in  a  sort  of  meditative  trance. 
He  was  as  unwelcome  a  foe  to  a  Thracian  boor 
with  his  javelin  as  to  an  Athenian  demagogue 
with  his  lasso  of  logic.  In  the  battle  of  Potidara 
he  was  the  most  valiant  fighter  in  the  troop,  and 
saved  the  life  and  weapons  of  the  first  young  man 
of  Athens  by  his  persistent  valor.  And  after- 
wards, on  the  field  of  Delium,  when  the  ranks 
were  routed,  he  walked  away  steadily  with  the 
general,  perhaps  discussing  the  nature  of  courage 
or  the  mode  of  life  in  Hades,  as  they  kept  mili- 
tary step,  but,  at  any  rate,  with  such  a  "  majes- 
tic composure,"  as  Alcibiades  says,  who  saw 
him,  "  that  the  pursuers  concluded  to  try  other 
game." 

The  comical  antithesis  of  his  appearance  and 
his  spirit  of  course  made  him  one  of  the  most 
interesting  objects  to  the  citizens  of  Athens.  He 
was  always  "  before  the  people,"  was  passionately 
attached  to  his  native  streets  and  soil,  and  even 
the  beauty  of  nature  could  rarely  tempt  him  be- 
yond the  walls.  "  From  fields  and  trees,"  said  he, 
"  I  can  learn  nothing,  but  I  can  from  the  men  in 


92  Socrates. 

town."  Now  and  then  some  young  enthusiast 
could  ensnare  him  to  the  bank  of  the  Ilissus,  with 
the  bait  of  an  oration  by  Lysias  folded  in  his 
bosom.  "  By  holding  out  written  speeches  before 
me,  you  could  lead  me  about  all  Attica,  and  wher- 
ever else  you  please,  as  shepherds  lead  their  hun- 
gry flocks  by  shaking  leaves  or  fruit  before  them." 
And  melted  by  the  youth's  reading,  while  they 
reclined  in  the  shade  of  the  plane-trees  and  the 
flowering  agnus-castus,  their  feet  dabbling  in  a 
fountain  that  bubbled  near,  the  old  man  would 
indulge  in  some  rich  and  dreamy  talk  on  religious 
traditions  and  the  beauty  of  goodness.  But  his 
instincts  usually  kept  him  to  the  crooked  streets 
and  dingy  shops  of  Athens. 

He  knew,  probably,  almost  every  individual  of 
its  fourteen  thousand  free  male  dwellers,  his  busi- 
ness, his  prospects,  his  abilities,  his  wealth,  and 
habits  of  life.  He  considered  the  city  as  his  par- 
ish, and  could  not  reconcile  it  with  his  conscience 
that  the  highest  or  lowest  of  his  flock  should  slip 
the  benefits  of  being  catechised  occasionally. 
There  were  no  newspapers  in  Athens  ;  but  Soc- 
rates seemed  to  be  a  strolling  and  scattering  Lon- 
don "  Punch  "  among  the  citizens.  Follow  in  his 
wake  for  a  day  or  two,  to  the  walking-grounds  in 
the  early  morning,  into  the  forum  before  noon, 
through  little  squads  of  talkers  later  in  the  day, 
and  to  some  party  of  poets,  politicians,  and  mus- 
tachioed gallants  in  the  evening,  and  one  will 
hear  the  strangest  medley  of  clear-thinking,  ac- 


Socrates.  93 

curate  statement,  sublime  principles,  queer  analo- 
gies, keen  and  merciless  satire,  drollery,  eloquence, 
and  witty  nonsense,  as  though  the  tongue  of  some 
crazy  genius  was  bewitched.  As  to  the  forms 
and  methods  of  dealing  with  his  company,  he 
would  be  as  flexible  and  compliant  as  a  Jesuit, 
but  in  his  aims  he  was  as  serious  as  Fenelon.  At 
one  time  he  is  splitting  the  seemingly  simple  propo- 
sition of  some  enthusiastic  philosopher  into  its 
various  elements  as  expertly  and  smoothly  as  an 
adept  will  tear  apart  the  laminae  of  a  thin  plate 
of  mica.  In  a  few  minutes  he  is  lashing  the 
licentiousness  of  a  talented  man  through  some 
gorgeous  fable,  and  cross-questions  him  about 
what  is  most  desirable  in  life,  till  his  victim  con- 
demns himself  before  a  crowd  of  eager  listeners. 
Some  forenoon  he  may  be  found  in  the  bridle- 
cutter's  shop  that  stood  near  the  Athenian  forum. 
The  young,  rich,  and  handsome  Euthydemus  is 
there  with  a  circle  of  admiring  cronies,  —  a  lad 
who  has  a  fine  collection  of  the  poets,  and  boasts 
that  he  will  yet  govern  Athens  by  his  sweet  voice 
and  fluent  speech.  Socrates  feels  moved  to  let  a 
little  light  into  his  mind  upon  the  qualifications 
of  a  statesman.  He  proposes  some  meek  in- 
quiries about  Athenian  history,  diplomacy,  com- 
merce, and  law,  and  finds  that  his  knowledge  is 
very  shallow.  He  probes  him  with  some  test  ques- 
tions on  justice,  wisdom,  prudence,  and  law,  and- 
shows  that  his  conceptions  are  feeble  and  hazy, 
and  then  gravely  informs  the  bystanders  that  the 


94  Socrates- 

political  ambition  of  the  stripling  somehow  seems 
to  him  like  the  advertisement  of  a  doctor  running 
thus  :  "  It  is  true,  gentlemen,  I  never  thought  of 
making  physic  my  study,  and  did  not  even  wish 
to  have  the  reputation  of  it ;  but  be  so  kind  as  to 
choose  me  your  physician,  and  I  will  soon  gain 
knowledge  by  making  experiments  upon  you."  It 
is  pleasant  to  know  that  one  more  interview  like 
this  converted  Euthydemus  into  a  friend  of  Soc- 
rates and  a  sober,  studious  man.  One  cannot 
help  thinking  what  a  profitable  bargain  it  would 
be  if  our  own  government  could  have  a  Socrates 
every  winter  at  the  price  of  his  second-hand  toga, 
soup,  and  shoes,  to  dog  and  drill  the  experimental 
politicians  of  Congress  on  the  avenue  or  in  the 
lobbies.  '  On  one  occasion  a  person  could  hear 
Socrates  reproving  the  quarrels  of  brothers,  convin- 
cing them  of  the  beauty  of  fraternal  love  by  induc- 
tion, and  reconciling  them  by  syllogism.  Soon  he 
is  convicting  a  military  teacher  of  ignorance  of  his 
profession  ;  in  a  little  while  he  is  in  the  studio  of 
Parrhasius,  and  thence  to  the  shop  of  Clito,  the 
statuary,  drawing  out  of  them,  by  his  corkscrew 
inquiries,  the  confession  that  art  is  never  so  well 
employed  as  when  put  to  the  service  of  what  is 
noble,  modest,  virtuous,  and  amiable.  His  pleas- 
antry would  show  itself  in  his  enigmatical  way  of 
introducing  or  enforcing  a  lofty  proposition.  With 
a  mixed  company  around  him,  he  would  quote 
and  urge  the  line  of  Hesiod,  — 

"  Employ  thyself  in  anything  rather  than  be  idle." 


Socrates.  95 

Then  what  delight  it  gave  him  to  see  the  group 
look  somewhat  sceptical  as  to  its  morality,  until 
some  captious  or  very  common-sense  man  asked 
whether  employment  in  gambling,  stealing,  and 
debauchery  is  better  than  doing  nothing !  How 
would  he  define  and  examine  and  make  the  doc- 
trine blaze  before  their  minds  that  gambling  and 
all  vice  were  not  employment,  but  the  most  cor- 
rupt and  infamous  idleness  !  At  a  feast,  once, 
where  the  company  were  called  upon,  each  by 
another,  to  state  what  they  chiefly  valued  them- 
selves upon,  Socrates  rose  in  his  turn  and  with 
the  greatest  gravity  said  that  he  valued  himself 
on  being  a  pander  and  procurer.  The  guests 
were  astounded,  and  most  of  them  roared.  After- 
wards he  went  to  show,  in  no  joking  way,  how 
earnestly  it  was  his  aim  to  make  perfect  souls 
that  should  be  desirable  and  useful  to  the  state, 
and  to  bring  together  those  who  should  love  each 
other  for  the  best  qualities,  and  be  improved  by 
each  other's  company.  1  What  a  fine  union  of 
sense  and  fun  in  his  criticism  upon  a  volume  of 
Heraclitus  which  Euripides  loaned  him  :  "  That 
which  I  understand  of  it  is  excellent ;  I  believe 
that  also  to  be  excellent  which  I  do  not  under- 
stand, but  it  would  take  a  Delian  diver  to  reach 
the  sense."  At  such  parties  he  might  often  be 
heard  to  preface  a  tough  dialogue  with  a  young 
man  by  sallies  like  this  :  "  My  young  friend  Cal-- 
lias  here  went  to  a  noted  instructor  to  learn  mne- 
monics, and  succeeded  well ;  for  if  he  sees  a  toler- 


g6  Socrates. 

ably  handsome  woman  he  can  never  forget  her, 
so  perfectly  has  he  learned  the  art  of  memory." 
It  does  n't  need  sophists  to  teach  young  men  that 
art  now.  The  young  gallant  might  be  quite  proud 
of  the  pleasantry  for  a  moment,  but  if  he  had  a 
weak  spot  in  his  character  let  him  tremble,  for 
the  humorous  remark  is  only  a  coating  of  sugar 
for  the  stringent  medicine  that  is  to  follow  soon. 
At  times  one  might  find  him  in  friendly  chat 
with  a  priest  of  the  dominant  religion,  and  when 
he  had  warmed  and  flattered  the  clerical  man 
sufficiently  to  the  temper  of  good-fellowship,  the 
modest  query  might  be  heard  from  the  lips  of 
Socrates,  "  Can  you  tell  me  what  is  holy  and 
what  impious?"  "O,  yes,"  is  the  patronizing 
response ;  "  that  which  is  pleasing  to  the  gods  is 
holy,  and  what  is  not  pleasing  to  them  is  impious." 
"  Admirably  answered  ;  but,  my  excellent  friend, 
do  not  the  gods  quarrel,  and  is  it  not  said  that 
there  are  enmities  among  them,  and  jealousies 
one  of  another,  so  that  what  is  pleasing  to  Jupiter 
would  be  very  uncomfortable  to  Saturn;  and 
what  would  make  Vulcan  clap  his  hands  would 
make  Juno  bite  her  lips  with  vexation  ?  "  "  It  is, 
truly,  so  said."  "  So,  then,  you  see,  if  what  is 
pleasing  to  the  gods  be  holy,  the  same  thing 
would  be  at  once  holy  and  unholy,  since  it  is 
pleasing  to  some  gods  and  displeasing  to  others." 
Here  is  a  dilemma,  indeed,  but  it  is  at  last  re- 
lieved by  this  new  and  broader  definition  that 
"  what  all  the  gods  hate  is  impious,  and  what 


Socrates.  97 

they  all  love  is  holy;  but  that  what  some  love 
and  others  hate  is  neither  or  both."  "  But,  my 
dear  Euthyphro,"  resumes  Socrates,  "  is  not  that 
which  is  loved  one  thing,  and  that  which  loves 
another  ? "  "  Certainly."  "  And  all  the  gods  love 
holiness,  according  to  your  statement  ?  "  "  Yes." 
"  But,  since  the  gods  are  one  thing  and  holiness 
another,  is  holiness  holy  because  they  love  it,  or 
do  they  love  it  because  it  is  holy?"  That  question 
should  have  made  every  temple  shake  on  the 
Acropolis. )  Thus  does  he  suggest  to  the  dormant 
mind  of  the  priest  that  polytheism  is  a  blunder  of 
induction,  —  that  there  is  something  intrinsically 
and  eternally  pure  and  excellent  which  hangs 
and  flames  like  a  zenith  star  above  the  world  of 
spirits,  above  all  theologies  and  creeds,  and  be- 
neath which  the  mythical  Olympus  is  but  a  miser- 
able, dirty  ant-hill  which  the  foot  may  kick  into 
dust 

A  man  that  could  talk  thus  would,  no  doubt, 
be  a  treasure  to  the  delighted  intellectual  listeners, 
but  would  not  be  especially  welcome  to  the  gen- 
tleman he  felt  a  divine  impulse  to  enlighten,  or 
hold  up  spitted  upon  his  barbed  dialectics. 

We  may  realize  his  relations  to  Athens  if  we 
fancy  some  subtle  professor  of  moral  philosophy, 
some  acute  and  tough-brained  Father  Lamson, 
some  courteous  and  imperturbable  Mr.  Brownson, 
inflamed  with  the  idea  that  he  must  improve  the 
Bostonians  in  clear  and  proper  thinking,  and  as- 
sume the  mission  of  reforming  loafer  about  town. 
5  G 


98  Socrates. 

And  so  he  happens  in  upon  the  broker's  board  at 
eleven,  with  the  gracious  but  astounding  saluta- 
tion, "  Well,  my  friends,  suppose  we  dismiss  the 
topic  of  '  Sullivan  '  bonds,  and  the  'Old  Colony ' 
stock,  and  the  prospects  of  the  'Vermont  and 
Massachusetts,'  and  discourse  a  while  on  the  chief 
end  of  man."  At  twelve  he  is  disputing  pitilessly 
with  a  great  criminal  lawyer,  just  hurrying  to  the 
bar,  whether  it  is  kind  and  friendly  to  save  even 
a  relative  from  the  just  punishment  of  a  crime, 
and  holds  him  by  the  button  till  he  has  impressed 
on  his  fancy  that  there  will  be  no  eminent  counsel 
for  villains  at  the  last  assize,  but  that  every 
scarred  and  bloated  soul  shall  be  put  to  the  penal 
discipline  that  looks  to  health.  At  half  past 
one  he  saunters  into  the  rotunda  of  the  Exchange, 
and  before  they  know  it  is  exercising  a  group  of 
merchant  princes  on  the  nature  of  the  beautiful 
-  and  the  true  riches  of  the  soul.  At  two  find  him 
at  "  Parker's,"  where  he  draws  his  chair  beside 
some  well-known  epicure,  and  with  an  air  of  the 
most  tender  interest  opens  this  proposition :  "  Eat- 
ing is  not  a  desirable  occupation,  and  not  an 
appetite  to  be  pampered  by  a  wise  man.  It 
is  merely,  you  see,  the  gratification  of  a  want, 
thus  restoring  the  system  to  equilibrium.  The 
part  of  wisdom  is  to  keep  as  free  as  possible  from 
the  want  and  the  necessity  of  serving  it.  The 
satisfaction  of  the  finest  dinner  is  like  the  satis- 
faction of  rubbing  an  itching  skin,  and  a  clean 
soul  would  as  soon  aspire  after  the  erysipelas  for 


Socrates.  99 

the  delight  of  scratching,  as  rejoice  in  a  clamor- 
ous stomach  for  the  sake  of  smoothing  it  down 
with  venison  and  turtle-steak.  The  temperate 
man's  soul  is  a  sound  cask  well  filled  with  honey 
and  milk,  and  giving  no  trouble  to  the  owner; 
while  the  life  of  the  epicure  is  like  a  barrel  full 
of  shot-holes,  which  he  is  compelled  to  fill  con- 
tinually with  liquors  that  are  hard  to  obtain,  or 
suffer  exquisite  agony.  If  you  go  on  in  this  way, 
my  brother,  you  will  be  doomed  in  Hades  to  fill 
a  colander  by  bailing  into  it  with  a  sieve."  At 
four  he  is  dissecting  before  a  patriot  the  relations 
of  conscience  and  the  constitution.  He  drops  in 
to  tea  with  an  eminent  clergyman,  whose  brain 
is  laboring  with  the  Sunday  sermon,  and  cools 
his  mental  fever  by  a  challenge  to  prove  to  him 
that  virtue  can  be  taught,  and  what  is  the  sanc- 
tion of  duty.  Perhaps  at  eight  he  is  at  the 
museum  gauging  the  moral  influence  of  "  Cinder- 
ella" (and  if  he  finds  it  bad,  let  Warren  look  out 
for  him  the  next  day),  and  at  ten  appears,  barefoot, 
unshaved,  and  self-invited,  among  a  supper-party 
on  Beacon  Street,  which  he  entertains  by  his  wit 
and  the  ample  resources  of  a  disciplined  reason 
till,  just  before  the  close,  he  silences  all  mirth,  and 
through  a  most  eloquent  allegory  or  myth  lets  a 
stream  of  dazzling  radiance  upon  the  point  that 
the  only  true  life  is  one  of  rigid  temperance, 
piety,  and  devotion  to  the  highest  duty.  And 
when  we  add  that  he  extends  his  parochial  visi- 
tations to  every  tinman's,  carpenter's,  and  hatter's, 


ioo  Socrates. 

to  every  cobbler's  shop  and  bookstore  and 
bakery,  to  editors'  sanctums,  to  the  market-stalls, 
to  the  reading-rooms,  to  oyster-saloons  and  watch- 
houses,  with  his  testing  questions,  and  that  terrible 
spiritual  proof-glass  which  brings  up  before  a 
man's  own  eyes  the  very  sediment  of  his  soul,  we 
know  what  Socrates  was  to  Athens,  and  how  he 
would  be  welcomed  here. 

But  the  setting  in  which  Socrates  is  generally 
placed  by  historians  of  philosophy  is  in  contrast 
with  Grecian  sophists.  These  were  a  class  of  in- 
structors—  often  itinerant — in  rhetoric,  eloquence, 
gesture,  correct  use  of  language,  and  the  general 
knowledge  which  would  be  a  good  outfit  for  an 
Athenian  man  of  the  world,  and  which  was  essen- 
tial to  polished  bearing  and  practical  success. 
The  Athenian  lads  delighted  in  talk.  Extem- 
pore fertility  of  invention,  acuteness  and  supple- 
ness in  debate,  apt  poetic  allusions,  sweetness  of 
diction,  and  happy  artifices  of  arrangement 'were 
to  them  like  the  voice  of  Jenny  Lind  to  a  soft- 
nerved  amateur.  It  was  part  of  the  business  of 
their  lives  to  speak  in  the  assemblies  of  the  people, 
and  no  youth  might  hope  to  attain  eminence  in  the 
state  unless  he  could  bait  the  ear  or  captivate  the 
heads  or  rule  the  hearts  of  the  acute,  vacillating, 
and  "fierce  democracie"  by  the  honey  of  his 
phrases,  the  agile  sophistries  of  his  tongue,  or  the 
graceful  heat  and  rhythmical  intensity  of  his  pas- 
sion. Any  teachers,  therefore,  who  could  impart 
a  dialectic  or  rhetorical  skill  were  sure  of  busi- 


Socrates.  101 

ness  and  of  enthusiastic  welcome  in  the  great 
Grecian  cities.  And  the  chief  sophists  did  not 
lose  any  scholars  through  an  excessive  modesty 
of  pretension. 

Nowadays  we  have  printed  sophists  which  tell 
us,  "  German  made  easy  "  ;  "  Italian  taught  in  ten 
short  lessons  " ;  "  History  crowded  into  a  chart." 
Then  the  golden  promise  was,  "  Reading,  speak- 
ing, and  fluency  taught  here ;  universal  science 
imparted  in  six  free  conversations ;  philosophers 
manufactured  in  five  sittings  ;  orators  and  archons 
polished  for  use  at  the  shortest  notice.  Price  to 
rich  men's  sons  fifty  dollars  a  lesson." 

To  tell  the  truth,  most  of  the  distinguished 
sophists  made  an  attractive  appearance.  They 
were  versed  in  the  general  natural  science  of  their 
time.  They  were  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the 
great  works  of  the  poets.  The  mnemonic  art 
they  had  mastered,  and  could  pour  out  by  the 
hour  the  great  events,  and  even  the  driest  details, 
of  history.  One  of  them  boasted  to  Socrates  that 
he  could  repeat  fifty  proper  names  after  merely 
reading  them  once.  They  composed  allegories 
on  the  virtues,  the  gods,  and  the  origin  of  things, 
which  were  at  their  tongues'  ends.  Many  subtle 
word-puzzles  were  stored  away  in  their  memory 
for  frequent  use.  Generally  they  boasted  that 
there  was  no  theme  on  which  they  could  not  speak 
melodiously  at  a  moment's  warning,  and  their 
hearers  were  challenged  to  put  them  to  the  test 
At  times  they  would  entertain  a  company  with  an 


IO2  Socrates. 

oration  about  a  bee,  and  a  polished  disquisition 
on  so  unpromising  a  topic  as  salt.  The  bearing, 
too,  of  a  prominent  travelling  sophist  was  most 
dignified.  He  knew  how  to  guard  his  person  with 
a  magic  circle  of  nice  proprieties,  and  to  make 
himself  attractive  by  a  most  polite  reserve.  And 
on  important  occasions  he  knew  how  to  dazzle  his 
assembly  by  his  magnificent  attire,  —  "  his  purple 
robes,  embroidered  sandals,  and  fingers  sparkling 
with  gold  and  gems."  On  such  occasions  every 
curve  was  exactly  the  line  of  beauty,  every  motion 
artistic,  and,  whatever  the  topic,  the  tropes  and 
metaphors  sparkled  in  the  gush  of  his  speech  like 
the  brilliant  spray  from  the  fountain's  throat.  The 
sophists  amassed  immense  sums  by  their  vocation, 
and  one  of  them  is  said  to  have  made  ten  times 
as  much  by  his  profession  as  Phidias  could  gain. 

When  one  of  the  most  celebrated  of  these 
men  visited  Athens,  the  young  men  among  the 
upper-ten  were  half  wild  with  delight  For  then, 
as  a  few  centuries  after,  it  was  true  that  "the 
Athenians  spent  their  time  in  nothing  else  but 
either  to  tell  or  to  hear  some  new  thing."  The 
doors  of  the  great  stranger's  dwelling-place  were 
beseiged  before  daybreak,  and  we  don't  know  but 
that  there  were  crowds  in  the  Bowdoin  Squares  of 
Athens  to  watch  his  outgoings  and  return.  It  was 
a  marked  day  in  the  calendar  when  the  lordly 
sophist  had  a  reception.  Socrates  would  be  very 
likely  to  pay  his  respects,  wish  him  the  freedom 
of  the  city,  and  offer  him  a  greeting  of  welcome. 


Socrates.  103 

But  his  reverence  and  affection  for  a  sophist 
were  those  of  a  \veasel  for  a  rat.  They  offended 
his  principles  and  his  practice  at  every  point. 
They  made  large  pretensions  to  knowledge;  he 
continually  protested  that  he  knew  nothing  more 
than  the  best  methods  of  acquiring  knowledge. 
They  taught  for  gain  ;  he  would  take  no  pay  for 
his  instructions.  It  was  often  pressed  upon  him, 
but  never  touched.  He  thought  it  was  as  really 
prostitution  to  sell  wisdom  as  love  for  money. 
In  his  view  education  was  a  serious  and  arduous 
matter,  and  he  thoroughly  hated  any  methods 
which  made  it  seem  easy.  It  was  not  that  the 
sophists  openly  taught  immoral  doctrines  that 
Socrates  objected  to  them,  but  that  they  did  not 
teach  anything  scientifically ;  did  not  ground  their 
pupils  on  the  fundamental  principles  of  certainty. 
They  diverted  ambition  from  a  patient  and  slow 
mastery  of  these,  turned  their  scholars  from  a 
steady  mining  for  the  diamonds  of  wisdom  to  a 
scramble  for  the  spangles  of  a  surface  informa- 
tion. And  so,  whatever  might  be  their  excel- 
lences, Socrates  saw  that,  in  the  light  of  his  stern 
theory  of  training,  the  sophists  were  vitiating  the 
mental  principles  of  the  young.  Instead  of  in- 
spiring a  method  they  imparted  a  knack.  Their 
aims  were  wholly  practical,  and  therefore  low. 
He  would  make  men  thorough,  earnest,  and  rev- 
erent thinkers ;  they  would  make  them  acute 
debaters,  ready  tacticians,  accomplished  orators. 
They  would  fit  them  for  eminence  in  the  forums 


1 04  Socrates. 

of  Greece ;  he  would  make  them  wrestlers  with 
ideas  in  the  gymnasium  of  science.  They  did 
not  pursue  nor  inculcate  wisdom  for  its  own  sake, 
but  only  for  the  sake  of  one's  private  interest 
and  political  success  ;  and  so  in  the  sight  of  Soc- 
rates the  sophists  had  no  mental  modesty  or  hu- 
mility, and  were  but  flaunting  courtesans  of  knowl- 
edge. 

It  was  worth  one's  while  to  see  a  meeting  before 
the  best  youth  of  Athens  between  these  ornate 
professors  and  the  buffoon-prophet,  the  cool  and 
comic  enthusiast,  the  pug-nosed  and  chuckle- 
headed  saint.  To  his  fellow-citizens  Socrates 
was  a  gad-fly,  but  to  them  a  vampire,  sticking 
with  the  gripe  of  a  centipede,  and  sucking  the 
conceit  out  of  them  with  glee.  He  was  so  glad 
to  see  the  great  Protagoras,  the  sharp-eyed  Pro- 
dicus,  the  all-accomplished  Gorgias,  or  the  cel- 
ebrated Evenus  of  Paros ;  what  a  blessing  to 
Athens  that  they  had  condescended  to  come  ; 
now,  surely,  he  could  learn  about  the  supreme  good, 
or  the  essence  of  wisdom,  or  the  most  fitting  life, 
or  what  the  just  may  be  And  although  he  had  not 
a  fourpence  to  pay  for  instruction,  he  would  beg  a 
little  talk  in  charity.  Then  how  would  he  prick 
their  brilliant  parachutes  and  let  out  the  gas;  how 
would  he  rub  clown  their  definitions  to  sand  on 
the  grater  of  his  dialectics ;  how  nicely  would 
he  put  his  tweezers  on  the  head  of  a  fallacy 
and  "  snake  "  it  out  of  its  artistic  nest ;  how 
would  he  inquire  and  inquire,  and  tire  the  brain 


Socrates.  105 

of  his  courtly  antagonist  by  leading  him  through 
the  mazes  of  his  own  disorderly  system  \  and 
split  some  pompous  axiom  into  a  forked  con- 
tradiction before  his  eyes,  and  thus  teach  the  by- 
standers how  to  think  and  discuss,  and  force  the 
baffled  professor  to  exclaim,  "  I  am  sure,  Socrates, 
that  with  five  minutes'  leisure  I  could  answer  you 
clearly,  but  just  now  I  am  tired  and  cannot  collect 
my  thoughts." 

But  what  offended  the  dainty  ears  of  the  soph- 
ists most  was  the  homeliness  of  his  allusions  and 
figures.  He  would  reduce  a  general  idea  to  its 
lowest  denomination,  and  examine  it  in  vulgar 
fractions.  If  one  of  them,  in  the  full  sail  of  dec- 
lamation, advanced  to  his  auditors  the  general 
and  somewhat  slippery  principle  that  the  wise 
ought  to  have  more  in  society  than  the  worthless, 
Socrates  would  try  to  get  at  his  precise  meaning 
in  this  way :  "  Then  you  would  say,  I  take  it, 
that  the  most  skilful  weaver  ought  to  wear  the 
largest  robe  and  have  the  most  clothes  ;  that  the 
best  cobbler  ought  to  walk  the  streets  in  the 
widest  shoes,  or  with  many  pairs  on  his  feet ; 
and  that  the  wisest  doctor  should  be  stuffed  with 
the  most  meats."  He  got  no  light  on  the  original 
proposition  of  the  sophist,  but  he  got  the  retort : 
"  By  the  gods,  Socrates,  you  never  cease  talking 
about  shoemakers,  cobblers,  fullers,  and  cooks, 
as  if  our  discourse  was  about  them  ! " 

Or  the  learned  Hippias  agrees  to  instruct  him 
about  beauty,  and  shows  him  that  "  finely  shaped 
5* 


106  Socrates. 

girls  and  noble  horses  and  a  well-proportioned 
lyre  and  golden  ornaments  and  precious  stones 
are  beautiful." 

"But  suppose  a  hard-headed  friend  asks  me 
if  a  fine  porridge-pot  isn't  beautiful,  and  if  a 
sycamore  spoon  for  pea-soup,  being  more  con- 
venient and  fitting,  is  n't  more  beautiful  than  a 
golden  one ;  for  he  might  say,  too,  that  if  you 
stir  the  soup  in  the  tureen  with  a  gold  spoon  you 
run  the  risk  of  breaking  the  dish  and  thus  spoil 
a  good  dinner,  while  a  wooden  spoon,  if  made  of 
an  aromatic  tree,  would  be  safer,  and  would  give 
the  soup  a  better  flavor.  What  must  I  say  if  my 
friend  speaks  thus,  O  Hippias  ? "  "  But  who  would 
dare  use  terms  so  coarse  on  a  subject  so  noble  ? " 
replied  the  sophist.  "Although  such  things  are 
fine  in  their  place  and  when  well  proportioned, 
yet  their  beauty  is  n't  to  be  spoken  of,  compared 
with  a  fine  horse  or  handsome  girl  or  other 
splendid  things."  "  Ah,  a  little  patience,  good 
Hippias :  if  we  compare  girls  with  goddesses, 
does  n't  the  same  thing  happen  as  when  we  com- 
pare porridge-pots  with  girls  ?  And  must  we  for- 
get what  Heraclitus  said,  that  the  wisest  man  will 
seem  only  like  a  monkey,  when  contemplated  in 
contrast  with  God,  for  wisdom,  beauty,  and  all 
such  qualities  ? "  Thus  does  he  compel  the 
dandy  sophist  to  take  off  his  mental  kids  and 
handle  rough-looking  realities,  at  the  same  time 
forcing  him  to  widen  his  definition  of  the  beauti- 
ful, and  hinting  to  him  the  Divine  loveliness  which 


Socrates.  107 

infolds  all  other  beauty  as  the  air  embosoms  the 
myriad  glories  of  the  world. 

How  fine  was  the  simile  of  Alcibiades  at  an 
Athenian  feast,  to  express  the  nature  of  Socrates  ! 
"  He  is,"  said  he,  "exactly  like  those  Silenuses  that 
sit  in  the  sculptors'  shops,  and  which  are  carved 
holding  flutes  or  pipes,  but  which,  when  divided 
into  two,  are  found  to  contain  the  images  of  the 

gods His  discourses  are  like  them,  too ; 

the  phrases  and  expressions  he  employs  fold 
around  his  exterior,  as  it  were,  the  skin  of  a  rude 
and  wanton  Satyr.  He  is  always  talking  about 
great  market-apes  and  brass-founders  and  leather- 
cutters  and  skin-dressers,  so  that  any  dull  and 
unobservant  person  might  easily  laugh  at  his  dis- 
course. But  if  ever  one  should  see  it  opened 
and  get  within  the  sense  of  his  words,  he  would 
find  that  they  alone,  of  all  that  enters  into  the 
mind  of  man  to  utter,  had  a  profound  and  per- 
suasive meaning,  presented  innumerable  images 
of  every  excellence,  and  were  most  divine." 

It  is,  perhaps,  superfluous  to  say  that  Socrates 
was  not  appreciated  at  his  value  by  his  fellow- 
citizens.  Many  despised  him  because  he  was 
poor,  ill-dressed,  and  had  no  laudable  employ- 
ment. Some  of  refined  taste  were  repelled  by 
his  ludicrous  ugliness.  Many  feared  the  homely 
honesty  of  his  talk  and  the  precision  of  his  probe. 
And  not  a  few  saw  with  alarm  that  his  severe 
speculations  were  prying  up  the  foundations  of 
the  state  polytheism,  unsettling  faith  in  the  thun- 


io8  Socrates. 

ders  of  Zeus  and  the  trident  of  Poseidon.  The 
comedians  found  him  rich  game.  In  the  "  Clouds," 
a  comic  play  of  Aristophanes,  brought  out  when 
Socrates  was  forty-five,  his  house  is  called  the 
"subtlety-shop,"  where  students  are  taught  the 
cause  of  rain  and  thunder,  and  exercised  in 
measuring  the  leap  of  a  flea,  —  the  furniture  of 
the  house  affording  ample  material  for  conduct- 
ing the  last  experiment,  since  the  couches  almost 
jump  of  themselves  from  excess  of  life.  Socrates 
himself  is  represented  lying  flat  in  meditation  on 
a  high  shelf,  that  his  mind,  as  he  expresses  it,  may 
be  hung  up  above  material  things,  and  his  subtle 
soul  be  mixed  with  liberal  air.  Some  of  the 
scholars  are  disposed  about  the  rooms,  in  the 
comedy,  on  their  hands  and  feet,  with  their  noses 
to  the  ground,  looking  like  kangaroos  on  all  fours. 
Socrates  is  portrayed  instructing  his  pupils  in 
precision  of  speech,  and  the  take-off  of  his  love 
of  accurate  classification  is  admirable,  where  the 
poet  represents  him  as  warning  his  pupils  not  to 
confuse  realities  even  so  far  as  to  call  a  male  and 
female  turkey  by  the  same  name  ;  but  by  all 
means  to  speak  of  the  male  as  a  turk^r,  and  the 
female  as  a  turkey£$\r.  He  promises  also,  in  the 
play,  to  instruct  any  youth  how,  by  proper  subtle- 
ties, to  make  an  unjust  cause  triumph  over  the 
right,  —  an  art  in  which  many  subtlety-shops  in 
modern  times  have  perfected  the  visitants..  An 
old  gentleman  oppressed  with  debt  and  a  riotous 
son,  tries  to  learn  the  mysterious  secret  sophistries 


Socrates.  109 

of  the  thinking-shop,  in  order  to  dodge  his  bills, 
but  finds  them  too  abstruse  for  his  soggy  brain,  and 
at  last  sends  the  son  himself  to  be  a  pupil.  The 
youth  catches  the  art  of  making  the  worse  appear 
the  better  reason,  but  he  learns  too  much,  loses 
his  small  remnant  of  filial  reverence,  and  beats 
his  father,  soon  after  he  graduates,  because  he 
had  not  good  taste  in  poetry.  The  old  gentleman 
naturally  demurs,  but  the  youth  catches  him  fairly 
on  the  logic  of  the  thing,  as  thus  :  — 

"  Now,  here  's^a  mild 
And  candid  question  for  you, 
Pray,  did  you  beat  me  when  a  ch^Kl  ?  'V 
"  Yes,  for  the  love  1  bore  you."       J  /   J^     t  > 
"  Then  ought  not  I,  toqy  toJembrace  »  ^ 

The  shortest  means  of /provih^v  /   I  -  *  C 

My  love  for  you,  and  beat  you,  as  A'  /  >  ,, 

This  beating 's  merely  loving  ?'   4  /  '/*  \  *. 

Children  are  thrashed  j^must  f2tHeflp  a/  /  > 
Unthrashed  and  unadmonished  ?  f  }  j  t  \  , 

You  '11  say  it  is  the  law,  I  know,  -«.  \  j 

For  children  to  be  punished. 

But  I  '11  reply  that  an  old  man  *••• 

Is  in  his  second  childhood, 
And  if  he 's  thrashed  more  fiercely  than 
A  youth,  it  can 't  be  styled  odd. 

Just  look  how  cocks  chastise  their  dads  ; 
Yet  wherein  do  their  natures 
Differ  from  us  Athenian  lads, 
Save  that  they  're  no  debaters  ? " 

The  play  closes  with  the  dismantling  of  Socrates' 
house  by  the  enraged  old  gentleman  and  his 
slaves. 

It   is   not  strange  that   Socrates  should  have 
been  made  fun  of  in  a  farce.     But  many  critics 


no  Socrates. 

have  racked  their  brains  to  explain  how,  if  Soc- 
rates was  a  lofty  teacher,  he  could  be  so  vilified, 
—  his  tenets  so  grossly  libelled  before  his  country- 
men upon  the  stage.  How  should  he,  whose 
morality  was  so  stern,  be  scourged  as  a  misera- 
ble sophist,  a  sapper  and  miner  of  domestic  order 
and  filial  ties  ?  How  should  he,  whose  delight  it 
was  to  spear  the  loose  thinkers  of  his  time,  be 
selected  as  the  type  of  the  worst  class  of  them  ? 
It  is  as  if  some  modern  novelist  or  stage  poet 
should  dare  to  dramatize  Dr.  Channing  inciting  a 
riot,  or  Deacon  Grant  and  John  Augustus  entic- 
ing young  men  into  gambling  shops  and  inviting 
them  to  take  a  social  glass.  We  must  make 
great  allowances,  however,  for  the  wild  license 
of  Athenian  comedy.  We  know  that  the  farce- 
writers  did  not  care  at  all  for  truth  in  their  repre- 
sentations. Men  who  could,  without  impunity, 
hold  up  Pericles  himself  to  ridicule,  in  the  sum- 
mit of  his  power,  would  not  bridle  their  fancy 
about  a  poor,  pale-faced,  itinerant  disputer  of  the 
streets.  Besides,  Socrates  was  considered  an  in- 
novator on  the  popular  faith.  The  poet  who 
satirized  him  was  a  rigid  pagan  conservative,  and 
would  not  have  the  .basis  of  a  single  altar  weak- 
ened or  questioned.  And  who  does  not  know 
what  strange  doctrines  are  associated,  by  the  un- 
thinking, with  the  name  of  every  man  whose 
intellect  throws  off  the  swaddling-clothes  of  tradi- 
tion and  creed  ?  The  friends  of  the  pagan  order 
knew  that  Socrates  dealt  with  abstractions;  and 


Socrates.  in 

so  they  called  him  a  trifler,  not  inquiring  into 
the  quality  of  the  abstractions.  It  was  enough 
that  he  was  'a  philosopher  ;  and  they  believed  that 
every  kind  of  philosophy  tended  to  poison  ancient 
morals  and  cripple  the  ancient  faith.  Blind  con- 
servatives never  stop  to  make  accurate  classifica- 
tions of  their  opponents.  They  make  no  account 
of  the  various  moods  and  spirit  in  which  dissent 
is  made,  and  the  frequent  affirmations  that  accom- 
pany denials.  One  man's  denial  is  a  yes  he  says 
to  something  better  which  he  loves  ;  another's  is 
merely  a  no  to  something  which  cramps  his  intel- 
lect, and  restrains  his  will,  and  which  he  hates. 
But  the  conservatives  divide  mankind  into  two 
parties,  the  friends  of  establishments  and  the 
malcontents.  There  are  besiegers  at  the  gates, 
and  the  garrison  of  the  fortress  call  them  all  foes, 
not  caring  to  ask  who  are  seeking  to  enter  in 
order  to  repair  and  enlarge  the  old,  dilapidated 
castle,  and  to  distinguish  them  from  the  mob 
who  would  batter  down  the  turrets  for  the  sake 
of  sack  and  murder.  Consider  what  a  motley 
crowd  are  lumped  together  to  be  laughed  at  under 
the  title  "  Transcendentalists  " ;  men  without  faith 
and  men  of  the  deepest  faith,  conceited  shallow- 
pates  and  lynx-eyed  seers,  nebulous  poets  and 
genius  with  its  pen  of  adamant  and  tongue  of 
gold,  flaccid  pantheists  and  those  whose  loyal 
lives  adorn  the  eternal  laws,  are  hooped  about 
and  bundled  into  fellowship  by  that  elastic  word. 
Shall  a  Catholic  bishop  .stop  to  analyze  and 


112  Socrates. 

parcel  out  the  various  grades  of  minds  included 
in  that  category,  when  they  can  be  conveniently 
anathematized  in  the  gross  ? 

Is  not  the  term  "neologist"  in  theology  made 
to  span  the  space  between  a  Fox  and  a  Mar- 
tineau,  a  De  Wette  and  a  Strauss  ?  Does  not  the 
title  " Socialist"  cover  with  equal  reproach  the 
Christian  whose  imagination  revels  in  the  pictured 
fulfilment  of  the  prayer,  "  Thy  kingdom  come," 
and  the  Red  Republican  whose  heart  is  fierce 
with  hate,  and  the  sensual  enthusiast,  like  Henri 
Heine,  who  would  lift  from  the  race  the  restraint 
of  principle  and  the  "  incubus  of  worship,"  and 
build  the  temple  of  license  on  the  ruins  of  the 
home? 

Let  a  man  be  heard  to  question  the  literal 
inspiration  of  "Chronicles,"  or  to  speak  of  the 
fragmentary  nature  of  the  Gospels,  or  to  hint  of 
any  mistakes  of  the  Apostles,  and  is  he  not 
called  infidel  and  a  foe  of  Christ  ?  Socrates  was 
called  to  pay  the  inevitable  price  of  dissent 
and  of  a  higher  insight,  by  a  total  misconception 
of  his  views.  The  ultra-conservatives  of  Athens 
feared  that  the  state  would  fall  if  the  throne  of 
Zeus  was  undermined,  and  that  virtue  would  have 
no  backer  if  the  flames  of  Tartarus  were  treated 
to  the  wet  blankets  of  dialectics.  They  could 
not  see,  and  cared  not  to  see,  that  the  no  of  Soc- 
rates to  the  traditions  was  a  higher  religious  yes. 
They  would  not  look  at  the  infinite  sweep  of 
Providence  which,  in  his  teachings,  displaced  the 


Socrates.  113 

sceptre  of  the  thunder-god.  They  could  not  dis- 
cern that  native  "beauty  of  holiness "  which,  in 
his  sight,  was  the  only  thing  in  the  universe  to  be 
desired.  They  could  not  comprehend  the  terrors 
of  that  intrinsic  spiritual  retribution  for  sin  which 
he  would  substitute  for  the  red  surges  of  Phlege- 
thon,  and  so  the  shortest  way  was  to  oppose  and 
satirize  him  as  an  atheist  and  a  mental  libertine. 

To  these  causes  of  dissatisfaction  we  must  add 
the  hostility  of  most  of  the  demagogues,  and  even 
of  the  statesmen,  of  Athens.  He  believed  in  the 
application  of  science  to  public  affairs  as  well  as 
to  speculative  questions.  He  believed  that  those 
only  had  the  right  to  govern  who  knew  how  to 
govern.  "The  sceptre,"  said  he,  "cannot  make  a 
king,  and  none  are  rulers  who  are  ignorant  of  the 
art  of  government."  The  whole  of  Mr.  Carlyle's 
famous  doctrine  on  this  point,  in  his  "  Latter-day 
Pamphlets,"  is  found  in  Socrates'  conversations. 
He  was  fond  of  picturing  the  qualities  that  are 
essential  to  successful  statesmanship  ;  and  in  this 
way  was  holding  up  an  ideal  in  the  workshops 
and  before  the  youth  of  Athens,  which  threw  too 
much  light  upon  politics  for  the  comfort  of  the 
politicians. 

Once  he  did  appear  on  the  stage  as  a  practical 
dealer  in  public  business.  He  was  more  than 
sixty  years  old.  Some  victorious  navy-generals 
were  on  trial  for  their  life  upon  the  charge  of 
neglecting  to  save  some  of  the  sailors  of  their 
own  fleet  whose  ships  had  been  sunk  in  the 


1 14  Socrates. 

engagement.  The  Athenian  voters  were  exas- 
perated against  them.  A  motion  was  made  in  the 
assembly  of  the  people,  —  a  general  concourse 
in  their  Faneuil  Hall,  — to  take  summary  action 
upon  the  case  of  the  generals  without  a  special 
trial.  It  was  plainly  illegal,  a  proceeding  of 
Judge  Lynch,  and  the  magistrates  declared  it  so, 
and  hesitated  to  put  the  motion.  Amid  great 
excitement  another  motion  was  made,  "  that  who- 
ever interrupted  the  free  votes  of  the  assembly 
should  be  involved  in  the  same  sentence  with  the 
commanders."  A  tumultuous  shout  greeted  the 
proposition,  but  the  presidents  still  refused.  A 
demagogue  arose  and  formally  accused  them,  and 
the  multitude  demanded  with  clamors  that  they 
be  called  to  account.  It  was  no  boy's  play,  this 
bearding  the  Athenian  panther  when  his  eyes 
were  kindling,  his  claws  starting  from  their  cush- 
ions, and  he  had  begun  to  growl.  Socrates  was 
by  law  the  chief  magistrate  of  the  day.  The 
rest  of  the  board  faltered  before  the  fury  of  the 
populace;  but  the  hard-headed  old  philosopher 
would  not  budge  an  inch.  The  leading  men  tried 
to  terrify  him,  the  voters  threatened  to  impeach  him, 
there  was  a  tempest  about  him  ;  but  he  said  that 
every  action  is  open  to  a  higher  and  searching 
inspection,  and  he  insisted  that  he  would  not  do 
an  act  which  was  contrary  to  law.  The  generals 
were  condemned,  but  Socrates  somehow  escaped 
being  mobbed,  and  lived  to  see  the  instigators  of 
the  affair  impeached,  imprisoned,  and  despised. 


Socrates.  1 1 5 

We  cannot  be  certain  to  which  law,  the  human 
or  the  higher  statute,  Socrates  referred,  when  he 
said  he  would  do  nothing  contrary  to  it.  For,  a 
year  or  two  afterwards,  the  ruling  oligarchy  sum- 
moned him  to  the  marshal's  office,  and  ordered 
him  to  go  with  four  others  and  seize  a  man  named 
Leon,  of  Salamis,  a  fugitive.  We  do  not  know 
the  crime  of  Leon,  and  cannot  positively  tell 
whether  he  was  white  or  black.  But  Socrates 
thought  he  was  entitled  to  his  liberty,  and  was 
not  attracted  to  kidnapping,  for  these  are  his 
words  :  "  That  government,  strong  as  it  was,  did 
not  so  overawe  me  as  to  make  me  commit  an 
unjust  action ;  but  when  we  came  out  from  the 
public  office  the  four  went  to  Salamis  and  brought 
back  Leon,  but  I  went  away  home  ;  and  perhaps 
for  this  I  should  have  been  put  to  death,  if  that 
government  had  not  speedily  been  broken  up." 

A  picture  of  Socrates  would  be  very  incom- 
plete that  did  not  include  a  sketch  of  his  do- 
mestic relations.  He  was  a  great  admirer  of 
human  beauty,  and  there  are  many  passages  of 
his  conversations  that  betray  a  noble  and  gen- 
erous estimate  of  the  nature  of  woman.  He 
was  above  the  prejudices  of  his  age,  and  judged 
human  beings  by  qualities  of  soul,  and  not  by 
sex.  Perhaps  if  now  among  us  his  voice  would 
have  been  heard  at  the  Worcester  Women's  Rights 
Convention  ;  for  he  said  publicly  at  a  supper- 
party  in  Athens,  what  was  a  heresy  in  Greece, 
"  I  have  long  held  the  opinion  that  the  female  sex 


n6  Socrates. 

are  nothing  inferior  to  ours,  excepting  only  in 
strength  of  body  and  perhaps  steadiness  of  judg- 
ment." And  Xenophon,  who  was  his  devoted 
friend,  in  a  fictitious  dialogue  puts  into  his  mouth 
the  words,  —  which  show  his  estimate  of  female 
character,  —  "  It  is  far  more  delightful  to  hear  the 
virtue  of  a  good  woman  described,  than  if  the 
famous  painter  Zeuxis  was  to  show  me  the  por- 
trait of  the  fairest  woman  in  the  world." 

It  has  been  well  remarked  by  another,  as  a 
singular  fact,  that  "  the  majority  of  those  men, 
who,  from  Homer  downwards,  have  done  most  to 
exalt  woman  into  a  divinity,  have  either  been 
bachelors  or  unfortunate  husbands."  There  is  no 
disputing  the  fact  that  Xantippe,  the  wife  of  Soc- 
rates, was  a  tartar,  or,  as  Aristophanes  would  say, 
a  tartaress.  She  tried  the  temper  of  the  sage  in 
every  way.  She  railed  at  him  and  stormed  against 
him  ;  she  disturbed  his  meditations  with  the  mop  ; 
she  doused  him  with  dirty  water  (clean  water,  it 
is  said,  would  not  always  have  been  a  misfortune) ; 
she  trampled  presents  that  were  sent  to  him  un- 
der her  feet ;  she  knocked  the  tables  over  when  he 
expected  a  philosophical  friend  to  a  frugal  supper ; 
she  tore  off  her  husband's  cloak  in  the  middle  of 
the  street,  which,  as  it  was  probably  his  only  gar- 
ment, must  have  been  annoying.  The  children 
complained  bitterly  about  her,  and  declared  to 
the  old  gentleman  that  her  tongue  was  worse  than 
the  claws  of  a  wild  beast.  But  the  sage  was 
never  ruffled.  The  visitations  of  dirty  water,  he 


Socrates.  117 

said,  were  the  rain  that  followed  the  thunder  of 
his  good  wife's  tongue.  He  exercised  the  boys  in 
dialectics,  and  proved  that  they  ought  to  ask  par- 
don of  the  gods  for  their  impiety,  and  all  his  own 
perils  he  tried  to  turn  to  moral  benefit. 

"If  you  think  so  highly  of  female  nature," said 
a  captious  friend  to  him,  "  how  comes  it  you  do 
not  instruct  Xantippe,  who  is,  beyond  dispute,  the 
most  insupportable  woman  that  is,  has  been,  or 
ever  will  be  ?  "  Pretty  plain  talk  to  a  man's  face 
about  his  wife.  "  But,  my  friend,"  said  Soc- 
rates, "  those  who  would  learn  horsemanship  do 
not  choose  tame  horses,  but  the  highest-mettled 
and  hardest-mouthed.  I  design  to  converse  with 
all  sorts  of  people,  and  I  believed  I  should  find 
nothing  to  disturb  me  in  their  conversation  or 
manners,  being  once  accustomed  to  bear  the  un- 
happy tongue  of  Xantippe." 

So,  in  early  church  history,  we  read  of  a  Chris- 
tian lady  who  desired  of  St.  Athanasius  to  pro- 
cure for  her,  out  of  the  widows  fed  from  the 
ecclesiastical  fund,  an  old  woman,  morose,  peev- 
ish, and  impatient,  that  she  might,  by  the  society 
of  so  ungentle  a  person,  have  often  occasion 
to  exercise  her  patience,  her  forgiveness,  and 
charity. 

That  Socrates  showed  great  genius  in  selecting 
the  toughest  trial  possible  to  the  soul  of  man,  and 
that  he  breasted  it  heroically,  is  beyond  question  ; 
yet  there  is  something  to  be  said  for  the  much 
berated  wife.     What  was  Socrates  as  a  husband  ? 


1 1 8  Socrates. 

He  was  so  poor,  by  his  own  confession,  that  he 
was  never  master  of  all  the  proper  implements 
of  housekeeping.  All  the  property  under  his 
roof  would  not  have  brought  forty  dollars  at  auc- 
tion. He  would  not  take  pay  for  his  teachings, 
but  his  teachings  could  not  purchase  fire-wood, 
and  he  would  not  do  any  other  work.  All  the 
morning  he  would  have  a  glorious  philosophical 
lounge  in  Simon  the  leather-dresser's  shop,  and 
then  go  home  to  dinner,  forgetting  that  Xantippe 
had  not  been  furnished  with  a  sixpence  to  trade 
with  the  fishman  at  the  door.  Husbands  may 
be  transcendental,  but  wives  who  must  cook  and 
bake  have  a  curious  way  of  looking  upon  life 
from  the  point  of  material  interests.  Socrates 
was  always  talking  about  how  little  a  man  could 
live  on,  but  he  did  not  earn  that  little.  He  was 
delighted  that  poor  men  in  Athens  could  buy  four 
measures  of  flour  for  an  obolus ;  but  where,  O 
Socrates,  is  your  obolus  ?  His  soul  was  revelling, 
no  doubt,  in  the  great  ideas,  and  pointing  out  the 
everlasting  distinction  between  the  agreeable  and 
the  just  \  but  his  wife,  all  this  while,  was  living 
among  the  empty  stewpans  and  rickety  chairs, 
and  meditating  how  a  good  dinner  would  be  both 
agreeable  and  just,  and  feeling  the  everlasting  and 
infinite  distinction  between  mutton  and  hunger, 
penury  and  household  comfort,  dependence  on 
charity  and  an  honest  livelihood.  Socrates  was 
thinking  over  the  benefits  society  derives  from 
virtue  and  good  teachers,  while  she  mused  on  the 


Socrates.  119 

greater  ease  with  which  the  little  Soccies  could 
be  clothed  if  the  sage  would  stick  to  chiselling 
statues  instead  of  sculpturing  souls.  Moreover, 
if  the  good  woman  ever  discovered  the  motive  of 
the  sage  in  marrying  her,  can  we  blame  her  if  she 
determined  to  assist  his  moral  development  by 
exercising  her  peculiar  genius  to  the  top  of  its 
bent  ?  It  was  a  Divine  call,  I  know,  that  made 
Socrates  a  bad  provider  for  his  family.  He  would, 
perhaps,  have  violated  the  highest  principle,  and 
been  a  worse  provider  for  the  world,  if  he  had 
fulfilled  the  ordinary  obligations,  and  worked  to 
have  his  parlor  furnished  and  the  larder  stocked. 
But  we  must  also  remember  that,  to  have  domestic 
tranquillity  in  his  circumstances,  he  should  have 
had  a  female  Socrates  for  a  wife,  and  that  only 
supernatural  grace  could  have  kept  any  ordinary 
woman  from  being  a  termagant  and  trial. 

The  family  of  Socrates  was  the  circle  of  his 
friends.  To  understand  him,  we  must  compre- 
hend his  influence  over  persons,  persons  of  great 
genius  and  of  the  most  diverse  temperaments, 
tastes,  and  gifts.  There  have  been  few  such  im- 
mense and  tyrannical  personalities  known.  The 
men  whom  he  confuted  in  debate  called  him  a 
cramp-fish  that  benumbed  the  wits  of  his  oppo- 
nents. And  he  attracted  as  powerfully  as  he 
paralyzed.  Among  those  who  valued  him  as  the 
apple  of  their  eye,  and  revered  him  as  almost 
more  than  mortal,  were  some  of  the  greatest 
names  of  Athens.  The  wealthy  Crito  was  his 


1 20  Socrates. 

steady  adherent  from  boyhood  till  death,  and 
would  have  rejoiced  to  turn  his  purse  upside 
down  for  him,  if  Socrates  would  have  permitted 
such  a  profanation  of  attachment.  The  acute 
and  vigorous  Antisthenes,  founder  of  the  sect  of 
Cynics,  was  early  captivated  by  him,  and  walked 
from  his  home  six  miles  every  day  and  back  again 
to  hear  him  talk.  He  despised  all  luxuries  and 
show,  and,  though  able  to  dress  better,  wore  a 
threadbare  cloak  and  ragged  clothes.  Socrates 
was  the  only  being  on  earth  he  loved,  but  friend- 
ship did  not  save  him  from  the  remark,  "  Why 
so  ostentatious  ?  Through  your  rags  I  see  your 
vanity." 

With  equal  ardor  the  luxurious,  oily-tempered, 
polished  sensualist,  Aristippus,  was  devoted  to 
him,  —  a  man  who  realized  perfectly  the  formula 
that  has  been  given  for  Goethe's  nature,  that  "he 
succeeded  in  subjecting  all  irregular  impulses  to 
a  course  of  disciplined  self-indulgence."  Mihi  res, 
non  me  rebus  subjungere.  The  society  of  Socrates 
was  as  indispensable  to  him  as  lazy  leisure,  wine, 
and  bodily  indulgence.  But  the  terms  of  the  in- 
tercourse reflect  no  dishonor  on  Socrates  himself. 
He  contested  inch  by  inch  with  him  the  theory  of 
pleasure,  and  forced  him  to  confess  before  others 
its  nonsense  and  inconsistency. 

The  virtuous  and  simple-hearted  Xenophon  was 
his  pupil,  and,  as  a  child  to  him  more  than  twenty 
years,  believed  him  to  be  inspired,  and  wrote  out 
his  recollections  of  him  to  vindicate  his  char- 
acter. 


Socrates.  1 2 1 

Euripides,  "  the  stage  philosopher,"  though 
older,  was  for  some  time  his  intimate  compan- 
ion. 

The  insolent  and  subtle  Euclid  of  Megara, 
afterwards  founder  of  a  sect,  was  a  constant  sat- 
ellite. So  necessary  was  the  society  of  Socrates 
to  him,  that  when  his  native  city  was  at  war  with 
Athens,  and  a  decree  forbade  any  dweller  in 
Megara  on  pain  of  death  to  be  seen  in  the  Athe- 
nian streets,  Euclid  dressed  in  female  attire  and 
walked  twenty  miles  by  night  to  the  house  of  Soc- 
rates, to  have  a  few  hours'  talk. 

And  a  host  of  others  —  Cebes  and  Simmias, 
who  left  their  native  country  for  his  sake ;  Phce- 
don  of  Elis,  once  a  slave  in  Athens,  but  redeemed 
by  Socrates'  influence,  who  repaid  the  favor  by 
the  growth  of  his  mind  and  his  ardent  affection ; 
the  beautiful  Channides  ;  the  young  Aristides,  who 
said  he  gained  strength  by  being  in  the  room  with 
Socrates  ;  Aristodemus,  Apollodorus,  Critobulus 
—  testified  to  the  personal  sway  of  the  slouchy 
ambassador  of  reason. 

The  two  sides  of  Socrates'  nature  were  repre- 
sented in  his  friends.  He  had  his  Boswell  always 
near  him,  who  consulted  oracles  about  him,  and 
was  continually  in  a  quarrel  with  somebody  in 
regard  to  him,  and  who  hardly  dared  to  pronounce 
his  name  aloud,  —  the  little,  dark,  shrivelled,  dirty, 
fussy  Chaeropho,  whom  the  comic  poets  delighted 
to  hit  off  under  the  nickname  of  "  Socrates'  bat." 

And  there  was  ^Eschines,   son  of  a  sausage- 


122  Socrates. 

maker,  who  took  a  notion  for  the  linked  thought 
rather  than  the  linked  meats,  —  a  poor  and  un- 
thrifty fellow,  whom  Socrates  once  advised  in  his 
distress  to  borrow  money  of  himself  by  reducing 
his  wants.  After  the  death  of  his  master  he 
failed  in  the  perfume  business,  and  took  to  pub- 
lishing Socratic  dialogues  for  a  living. 

Two  characters,  however,  appear  in  the  circle 
of  his  associates  who  eclipse  all  these.  The  first 
was  Alcibiades,  a  man  v,  ho  in  his  character  united 
the  distinguishing  traits  of  Lord  Peterborough, 
King  Charles  II.,  and  Voltaire.  He  bore  the  most 
aristocratic  blood  of  Athens.  His  wealth  was 
enormous,  and  his  face  the  handsomest  in  Greece. 
He  began  responsible  life  at  eighteen,  with  a  nat- 
ural temper  which  education  could  scarcely  tame, 
and  amid  circumstance  that  would  peril  not  only 
the  finest  disposition  but  the  firmest  principles. 
He  was  proud,  chivalrous,  and  munificent.  He 
had  a  passion  for  all  games,  cock-fights,  and  horse- 
races, and  an  equally  intense  delight  in  literature. 
He  kept  the  most  costly  stud  and  chariots,  carried 
pet  quails  in  his  bosom,  and  owned  a  most  valu- 
able dog,  whose  tail  he  cut  off  close,  that  Athens 
might  talk  about  it,  and  so  not  talk  of  worse  things. 
He  was  self-confident,  lawless,  and  dissolute,  and 
indulged  the  wildest  caprices  of  temper.  The 
people  petted  him  as  one  would  pet  a  complacent 
lion's  whelp.  The  women,  of  course,  all  loved 
him. 

He  struck  a  schoolmaster  who  did  not  happen 


Socrates.  123 

to  have  a  copy  of  Homer  in  his  house.  He  struck 
one  of  the  worthiest  citizens  of  Athens  on  a  wager, 
and  the  next  day  went  and  stripped  himself  before 
him,  begging  to  be  beaten  for  the  insult.  He 
openly  destroyed  the  public  record  of  a  charge 
against  one  of  his  friends.  He  carried  his  wife  by 
force  away  from  the  magistrate  to  whom  she  was 
applying  for  a  divorce.  He  would  reel  drunk, 
late  in  the  evening,  into  supper-parties,  where  he 
was  invited,  or  would  stand  at  the  door  while  his 
slaves  went  in  and  stole  the  goblets  from  the  table, 
which  he  would  coolly  give  away  as  chanty  to  the 
poor.  He  shocked  all  Athens  by  breaking  the 
sacred  busts  of  Mercury  in  the  streets  in  a  night 
scrape.  The  Mysteries  were  caricatured  in  his 
house  ;  and  a  comic  poet  who  dared  to  spear 
him  on  the  stage  disappeared  suddenly  by  mak- 
ing, as  was  supposed,  an  unexpected  midnight 
acquaintance  with  the  sea. 

The  dates  of  all  these  excesses  are  not  known  ; 
but  it  is  certain  that  at  one  time  he  was  devot- 
edly attached  to  Socrates,  and  was  beloved  by 
him.  They  walked  together,  wrestled  with  each 
other,  occupied  and  slept  in  the  same  tent  in  the 
camp.  He  went  to  learn  the  art  of  accurate 
thought  and  speech,  —  he  learned  more.  The 
philosopher  talked  with  him  on  his  danger  and 
duties,  made  him  cry  over  his  follies,  and  drew 
from  him  the  confession  that  such  society  seemed 
to  be  a  heavenly  provision  for  his  redemption. 
"  When  I  hear  him,"  he  is  reported  to  have  said, 


124  Socrates, 

11  my  heart  leaps  up  far  more  than  the  hearts  of 
those  who  celebrate  the  Corybantic  mysteries. 
He  alone  inspires  me  with  remorse  and  awe.  I 
stop  my  ears,  therefore,  as  from  the  sirens,  and 
flee  away  as  fast  as  possible,  that  I  may  not  sit 
down  beside  him  and  grow  old  listening  to  his 
talk."  Better  for  him  if  he  had  thus  listened ;  for 
then  he  would  not  in  his  checkered  fortune  have 
typified  the  history  of  all  lawless  ambition  and 
dissolute  license  \  he  would  not  have  had  the 
mortification  of  failing  to  reach  what  he  aspired 
after ;  he  would  have  been  saved  the  disgrace  of 
injuring  his  country  almost  fatally;  he  would  not 
have  died  in  banishment  and  shame,  and  by  the 
arrows  of  midnight  assassins. 

If  we  may  credit  a  story  of  Apuleius,  Socrates 
once  had  a  remarkable  dream,  in  which  he  seemed 
to  see  a  swan  fly  from  a  sacred  altar  in  the  Acad- 
emy to  his  breast,  which  afterwards  extended  its 
wings  towards  the  heavens  and  allured  the  ears 
of  men  and  gods  by  its  harmonious  voice.  While 
he  was  relating  the  dream,  Aristo  brought  in  his 
son,  a  finely  shaped  and  handsome  youth,  to  be  a 
pupil.  As  soon  as  Socrates  saw  him,  and  knew, 
by  his  outward  form,  what  his  mind  was,  he  ex- 
claimed, "  This,  O  friend,  was  the  swan  I  saw." 

Socrates  might  well  have  had  such  a  dream,  for 
it  was  the  boy  Plato  that  came  to  him  ;  and  if  no 
other  record  remained  to  us  of  his  greatness  than 
the  bent  he  gave  and  the  spirit  he  breathed  into 
the  genius  of  Plato,  his  fame  would  be  secure. 


Socrates.  125 

Ex  ungue  leonem.  The  indication  would  be  as 
certain  as  that  the  discovery  of  an  original  and 
huge  footstep  in  one  alabaster  slab  would  give  a 
new  mammoth  to  the  lists  of  zoology,  or  that  the 
finding  of  a  majestic  and  faultless  statue  among 
the  ruins  of  Etruria  would  furnish  Phidias  a  mate 
in  the  realm  of  art  From  twenty  to  thirty  Plato 
was  in  the  society  of  Socrates,  then  passing  from 
his  sixtieth  to  his  seventieth  year.  He  was 
gently  turned  by  Socrates  from  politics  and  pleas- 
ure and  a  frivolous  Athenian  ambition  to  a  life  of 
study  and  thought.  What  the  sage  could  not  do 
for  Alcibiades  he  did  for  Plato.  Never  was  the 
service  of  education  acknowledged  with  more 
ardent  gratitude,  never  was  it  repaid  with  such 
delicate  reverence.  The  lapse  of  fifty  years,  which 
made  Plato  the  hater  and  bitter  satirist  of  almost 
every  prominent  man  and  institution  of  society, 
did  not  weaken  his  memory  and  love  of  his 
master.  He  clung  to  him  in  thought  as  the  one 
true,  solid,  and  symmetrical  man  amid  a  crowd 
of  phantasms,  traitors,  and  dwarfs.  Plato  wrote 
no  eulogy  of  Socrates,  but  wherever  he  has  gone 
into  the  palaces  of  the  aristocracy  of  letters,  with 
his  courtly  mien  and  purple  drapery,  he  has  intro- 
duced his  old  slouchy,  unshod  master,  as  if  say- 
ing, with  elegant  haughtiness,  "  If  you  would  be 
honored  with  my  company,  make  him  also  wel- 
come who  has  made  me  what  I  am."  His  greatest 
works  are  cast  in  dialogues,  in  which  the  writer 
himself  never  appears,  but  where  Socrates  is  the 


126  Socrates. 

chief  speaker  and  hero,  as  though  the  highest 
thoughts  would  be  profaned  in  coming  through 
other  lips ;  and  thus,  arm  in  arm,  the  stately  duke 
and  the  democrat  of  philosophy  walked  down  the 
lists  of  fame. 

That  sweet  and  mystic  swan-song,  —  the  liquid 
fusion  of  poetry  and  science,  —  with  which  the 
genius  of  Plato  has  filled  the  cloisters  and  ora- 
tories of  the  chief  scholars  of  our  race,  has  em- 
broidered forever  the  name  of  the  chaste  and 
monastical  Silenus  with  the  melodious  chants  to 
"  the  first  pure,  first  holy,  and  first  fair." 

From  this  point,  where  his  greatest  personal 
influence  is  visible,  it  will  perhaps  be  most  fitting 
to  review  the  career  and  sum  up  the  qualities  of 
Socrates.  It  is  plain  enough  that  he  was  one  of 
the  men  whose  office  it  is  to  give  a  fresh  intellec- 
tual impulse  by  shedding  the  light  of  new  methods, 
and  whose  work,  like  that  of  Bacon  and  Des- 
cartes, is  seen  in  the  new  products  of  thought 
that  spring  from  the  soil  which  they  had  ploughed. 
Milton  has  finely  expressed  his  mission  thus  :  — 

"  Philosophy 

From  heaven  descended  to  the  low-rooft  house 
Of  Socrates :  see  there  his  tenement 
Whom  well  inspired  the  oracle  pronounced 
Wisest  of  men  ;  from  whose  mouth  issued  forth 
Mellifluous  streams  that  watered  all  the  schools 
Of  Academics  old  and  new,  with  those 
Surnamed  Peripatetics,  and  the  sect 
Epicurean  and  the  stoic  severe." 

Had  we  time  for  it,  it  would  be  pleasant  and 
profitable  to  follow  his  influence  upon  the  fortunes 


Socrates.  127 

of  philosophy  in  Greece.  He  was  the  father 
of  a  new  method  of  study.  '  His  thoughts  were 
the  seed-corn  of  systems.  His  pupils  were  the 
teachers  of  centuries.  The  great  works  of  the 
leading  names  in  ancient  speculation  were  slips 
from  the  mind  of  Socrates.  Each  bump  of  his 
brain  was  the  nucleus  of  a  philosophical  school. 
He  held  in  his  large  reconciling  intellect  princi- 
ples which  separated  when  less  massive  thinkers 
tried  to  handle  them,  and  were  developed  by  rival 
parties  as  hostile  elements.  For  a  thousand  years 
he  held  sway  over  the  processes  of  the  human 
mind ;  and  ancient  heathen  literature,  when  it 
sought  an  example  of  a  noble  self-sacrificing  life 
of  thought,  spontaneously  sought  an  illustration 
in  some  act  or  saying  of  Socrates. 

His  life  is  the  dividing-point  between  the 
barren  and  the  healthy  periods  of  Grecian  phi- 
losophy. His  mind,  so  capacious  and  healthy, 
could  be  split  up  into  various  schools.  Hardly 
had  he  left  the  world,  than  the  strong  and  simple 
light  he  shed  was  scattered  in  various  hues  by  the 
prismatic  minds  that  had  surrounded  him  or  that 
succeeded  him  ;  but  in  almost  every  case,  —  as 
happens  when  the  strands  of  the  solar  beam  are 
brilliantly  dishevelled,  —  the  vivifying  principle, 
the  actinic  ray,  was  lost. 

The  Cynic  system  was  an  exaggeration  of  the 
personal  habits  of  Socrates,  his  poverty,  tem- 
perance, and  contempt  of  wealth  erected  into  a 
theory,  but  devoid  of  that  absorbing  reverence 


128  Socrates. 

for  the  right  which  made  him  forget  the  eccen- 
tricity of  his  habits  in  the  joy  of  his  higher  loyalty. 
The  Cynic  intruded  his  tub  and  his  dirt  upon  the 
notice  of  the  passer,  as  if  to  say,  "  See  my  estimate 
of  higher  things  by  my  comfortless  indecency." 
Socrates  showed  an  adoration  for  the  supreme 
things  that  was  genial,  and  tried  to  make  others 
recognize  their  beauty  and  worth;  he  did  not  boast 
of  his  penury  and  cheerless  home,  but  silently 
paid  that  price  for  the  privilege  of  leisure  to 
revel  in  his  mission.  The  hair-splitting  Megarian 
school  was  a  caricature  of  his  merciless  dialectics, 
lacking  the  buttress  of  his  Franklin-like  common- 
sense  to  save  it  from  caving  into  the  abyss  of 
abstract  and  fathomless  foolishness.  The  Cyre- 
naic  theory  was  a  Silenic  parody  on  his  principle 
that  happiness  is  the  aim  of  man,  and  that  every 
soul  should  make  circumstances  subject  to  its 
own  control.  It  was  like  abusing  the  principle, 
"sufficient  unto  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof/'  into 
a  warrant  for  intemperance  and  a  free  commission 
to  live  as  a  Sadducee. 

Indeed,  we  are  not  to  suppose  that  his  poverty 
and  the  contempt  of  so  many  of  his  fellow-citizens 
were  at  all  delightful  to  him.  He  felt  his  isola- 
tion. Xenophon,  in  a  fictitious  dialogue,  makes 
Socrates  say  in  reply  to  a  man  who  begged  him 
to  correct  any  errors  the  sage  might  see  in  him  : 
"  How  can  I  correct  you  when  you  are  already 
possessed  of  the  character  of  a  good  and  honest 
man  ?  and  especially  when  I  am  taken  for  the 


Socrates.  1 29 

greatest  trifler,  who  employs  himself  in  nothing 
but  measuring  the  air  ?  or,  which  is  a  far  worse 
character,  that  I  am  a  poor  man,  which  is  a  token 
of  the  greatest  folly  ?  This,  indeed,  might  have 
been  a  trouble  to  me,  if  I  had  not  met  the  other 
day  a  horse  belonging  to  Nicias,  with  a  crowd  of 
people  about  him  admiring  his  good  qualities, 
and  talking  abundance  in  praise  of  his  strength 
and  spirit.  This  made  me  ask  the  question  of 
the  master  of  the  horse,  whether  his  horse  was 
very  rich  ?  But  he  stared  upon  me,  and  laughed 
at  me,  as  if  I  had  been  a  madman,  and  only  gave 
me  this  short  answer,  How  should  a  horse  have 
any  money  ?  When  I  heard  this,  I  went  away 
contented  that  it  was  lawful  for  a  poor  horse  to 
be  good  on  account  of  his  free  and  generous 
spirit;  and  therefore  I  conclude  it  is  likewise 
possible  for  a  poor  man  to  be  good."  * 

This  must  be  derived  from  a  real  saying  of 
Socrates,  for  it  does  not  seem  possible  that  Xen- 
ophon  could  have  had  wit  enough  to  invent  its 
quaintness  and  pervade  it  so  delicately  with  such 
sweet,  pathetic  humor. 

The  Platonic  methods  and  speculations  were  the 
rigorous  application  of  his  mental  principles  and 
the  coloring  of  his  more  practical  and  homely 
ideal  faiths  with  the  purple  and  gold  of  a  gorgeous 
fancy.  Stoicism  was  the  apotheosis  of  his  moral 
hardihood  and  self-poise,  while  the  Aristotelian 
ambition  to  scour  the  kingdom  of  nature  and 

*  Xen.  Good  Husbandry,  663. 
6*  I 


1 30  Socrates. 

label  all  the  parcelled  facts  of  the  universe  caught 
its  impulse  from  his  delight  in  the  homeliest  details 
which  indicated  or  enforced  a  law,  and  his  strenu- 
ous attempts  after  accurate  classification.  Nothing 
is  more  singular  in  the  history  of  philosophy  than 
the  fact  that  a  man  so  endowed  with  the  analytic 
faculty  should  have  guarded  it  religiously  from 
roaming  and  rioting  in  unwholesome  fields,  and 
wasting  itself  in  curious  speculative  exercises,  or 
grubbing  in  miserable  researches  for  the  sanction 
of  our  primitive  faiths,  but  should  have  devoted 
it  to  the  work  of  elucidating  moral  truth,  and  made 
it  steadily  subservient  to  practical  ends. 

And  here  the  singular  dualism  of  his  nature 
attracts  attention.  A  radical  distinction  between 
men  is  often  indicated  by  saying  that  some  are 
intuitive  and  others  logical  in  their  processes  of 
reaching  truth.  "  The  Arabs  speak  of  a  confer- 
ence between  a  mystic  and  a  philosopher.  On 
parting,  the  philosopher  said,  '  All  that  he  sees  I 
know,'  and  the  mystic  said,  '  All  that  he  knows 
I  see.' "  Socrates  was  a  seer  and  a  knower.  By 
his  dreams,  trances,  and  abstractions,  his  inward 
suggestions  and  Divine  call,  he  is  fellow  with  the 
Brahmins  and  Soofees,  George  Fox,  Bcehmen,  and 
Swedenborg.  By  his  scientific  methods  and  pry- 
ing scrutinies  and  impatience  of  inaccurate  state- 
ment he  belongs  to  the  thinkers  and  provers,  and 
stands  in  close  affinity  with  the  Aristotles,  Bacons, 
Hamiltons,  Herschels,  and  Stuart  Mills.  He  was 
a  man  of  faith,  and  he  insisted  on  knowledge. 


Socrates.  131 

He  meditated  logically.  No  prophet  ever  felt 
more  thrillingly  the  supreme  worth  of  virtue  and 
the  holy;  but  he  discarded  the  prophet's  heat 
of  utterance,  and  put  on  the  missionary  robes 
to  convince  his  fellows  by  earnest  conversation 
that  virtue  is  truth,  that  there  is  no  such  dread- 
ful thing  as  the  insult  men  offer  truth  by  not 
founding  their  behavior  on  it,  and  that  what  can- 
not be  proved  is  certainly  too  dangerous  to  be 
lived. 

His  soul  was  doubly  furnished,  for  it  had  strong 
wings  and  sturdy  feet.  With  Plotinus  he  could 
take  "  the  flight  of  the  alone  to  the  alone,"  and  he 
could  travel  with  any  pedestrian  rationalist  and 
climb  with  him  all  day  the  rugged  steeps  of  in- 
duction, and  make  no  misstep  in  gaining  the  peak 
where  the  lower  landscape  is  comprehensively 
surveyed. 

This  dualism  is  manifested  in  him  at  every 
point.  We  cannot  sufficiently  admire  the  fine 
proportions  of  his  intellect,  its  majestic,  planet- 
like  poise.  Mysticism  never  betrayed  him  into 
fanaticism,  nor  obscured  by  its  luminous  diffusive 
haze  the  clear  boundaries  between  demonstrative 
and  speculative  truth.  He  would  revel  in  volatile 
abstractions  and  practical  details  with  equal  de- 
light. Let  him  get  pitted  against  some  subtle 
head  from  abroad,  and  he  would  never  tire  of  lead- 
ing or  following  for  hours  through  all  the  intrica- 
cies of  speculation  about  the  relations  of  courage, 
temperance,  knowledge,  and  piety  ;  and  when  his 


132  Socrates. 

poor  opponent's  brain  was  completely  fagged  out, 
Socrates  would  take  him  to  the  best  and  cheapest 
cobbler's  stall,  show  him  the  miller's  establish- 
ment where  a  poor  man  could  buy  a  large  quan- 
tity of  fine  flour  for  a  penny,  walk  with  him  to 
the  oil-man's  where  a  chcenex  of  olives  cost  two 
farthings,  and  then  hasten  to  the  slop-shop  where 
a  jerkin  without  sleeves  could  be  had  for  ten 
drachmas ;  and  from  these  facts  the  foreigner, 
who  had  seen  him  untwist  the  constitution  of 
knowledge,  listened  to  a  discourse  on  the  fe- 
licity of  Athens.  Socrates  was  a  transcendental 
Cobden.  He  was  a  cool  and  comic  enthusiast. 
He  was  a  compromise  of  Pythagoras  and  Punch. 
He  trod  the  mother  earth  with  bare  feet,  and 
stared  into  the  spiritual  universe  with  his  lobster 
eyes. 

Some  religious  men  regard  sin  chiefly  in  the  light 
of  God's  mercy,  and  see  it  as  the  deepest  and 
blackest  ingratitude;  others  conceive  it  in  contrast 
with  Divine  Sovereignty,  and  regard  it  as  deliber- 
ate rebellion  ;  others  are  absorbed  with  the  feeling 
of  the  immense  wrong  it  does  the  soul,  like  the 
scorching  of  a  nerve  by  flame,  and  dwell  on  its 
intrinsic  evil;  others,  again,  forecast  by  their  imagi- 
nation the  terrible  results  it  is  storing  up,  and 
tremble  before  the  glare  of  the  future  circumstan- 
tial hells  into  which  it  will  one  day  slide  the  spirit. 
But  Socrates  saw  chiefly  the  intense  and  towering 
nonsense  of  sin.  Evil-doing  of  every  sort  is  hos- 
tile to  nature,  and  is  therefore  idiocy.  All  hope 


Socrates.  133 

of  gaining  anything  by  it  is  like  the  expectation 
of  bending  the  law  of  gravity  from  its  customs 
for  private  advantage,  or  wrestling  with  the  electric 
stream.  No  Gentile  intellect  has  ever  seen  more 
clearly  the  leading  vital  laws.  And  what  he  saw 
he  worshipped.  A  law  once  seen  was  as  a  gos- 
pel. He  asked  no  other  sanction  for  a  principle 
than  that  it  is  a  reality.  The  ordinary  method 
with  men  is  to  ask,  not  whether  a  principle  is  true, 
but  "  What  if  we  do  not  follow  it  ? "  "  What  ad- 
vantage is  there  in  acceptance  and  obedience? 
What  jails,  dungeons,  stocks,  and  whipping-posts 
lie  behind  the  statute,  and  enforce  it  with  an  elo- 
quence which  our  nerves  and  self-interest  can 
appreciate?"  But  Socrates  did  not  slyly  gauge 
the  police  force,  nor  count  the  sheriffs,  which  a 
law  could  muster  before  he  concluded  to  be  loyal. 
If  Nature  indicated  that  a  clean  tongue  was  proper, 
no  pepper  and  artistic  cookery  went  into  his 
stomach.  If  she  said  that  a  firm  muscle  lay  in 
her  order,  a  bed  of  lamb's-wool  would  not  be  soft 
to  him,  and  luxury  was  despicable.  If  Nature 
hinted  the  supremacy  of  justice  and  the  good,  all 
glory,  material  magnificence,  pomp,  wealth,  and 
power  were  as  nothing  but  playthings,  and  not  to 
be  accepted  if  they  could  not  follow  the  path  of 
entire  consecration  to  what  is  best. 

Virtue  in  his  view  was  truth,  and  vice  practical 
nonsense ;  and  since,  in  his  belief,  the  parts  of 
truth  must  be  harmonious,  he  maintained  that  all 
clear  and  correct  thinking  is  consistent  with  holi- 


1 34  Socrates. 

ness  and  leads  to  it,  while  every  dark  spot  of  con- 
fusion or  uncertainty  in  the  intellect  might  turn 
out  to  be  the  "  apex  of  hell."  Hence  the  earnest- 
ness with  which  he  insisted  on  accurate  thinking ; 
hence,  too,  his  aversion  to  positive  magisterial 
instruction.  All  truths  are  kindred,  and  truth 
enough  he  believed  lay  in  every  soul  to  save  it, 
qr  at  least  to  condemn  its  impurity,  if  the  mind 
could  be  made  to  appreciate  it.  Consistency  was 
his  watchword  and  his  sanative  for  the  sin  in  the 
world.  Whatever  is  worth  considering  is  worth 
knowing  thoroughly,  and  if  any  fundamental  point 
is  known  scientifically  all  needed  practical  knowl- 
edge will  come.  "  Enthrone," said  he  to  men, "  what 
you  occasionally  recognize  as  supreme.  Do  not 
make  your  conduct  a  practical  falsehood.  Be  con- 
sistent. Give  me  one  fundamental  element  of 
your  belief,  and  if  it  is  real  I  will  get  a  purchase 
on  it  for  my  lever  that  will  wrench  your  false  soul 
out  of  joint ;  if  it  is  unreal  I  will  show  you  how 
your  character  is,  or  soon  will  be,  as  soft  as  mush." 
Thus  .he  held  up  realities,  preached  intellectual 
morality,  and  belabored  every  unfaithful  man  with 
his  own  admissions.  There  was  no  invective 
in  his  private  sermons.  The  terribleness  of  his 
method  was  its  calmness  and  scientific  coldness. 
By  his  leisurely  conversations  he  made  men  judge 
themselves,  brought  the  most  hardened  men  up 
by  the  strain  of  his  logic  to  see  that  their  careers 
were  founded  on  falsehood  as  deliberately  and  as 
surely  as  a  bull  is  drawn  by  a  windlass  to  the 


Socrates.  135 

slaughter-house.  "  If  you  will  live  stupidly,  like 
sots,  it  shall  not  be  my  fault  I  will  make  you 
ashamed  of  it  at  least.  You  shall  know  that  you 
are  ninnies,  and  if  the  weapon  I  am  commissioned 
to  wield  does  not  reach  your  heart  it  shall  not  be 
because  it  does  not  spike  your  intellect,  —  strike 
down  through  and  through  your  brain."  It  was 
not  his  forte  or  aim  to  frighten  people  or  to 
reach  their  affections,  but  to  convince  and  con- 
vict ;  and  when,  as  in  the  case  of  Alcibiades,  he 
did  stir  the  feelings,  it  was  probably  by  the  suc- 
tion-pump of  his  logic  that  he  moved  the  fountain 
of  tears. 

We  cannot  estimate  too  highly  the  un feverish- 
ness  of  soul  exhibited  by  Socrates.  It  is  better 
to  be  fanactical  in  the  cause  of  righteousness  than 
to  freeze  in  self-love.  But  nothing  is  so  grand 
and  majestic  in  the  universe  as  the  sustained, 
healthy,  and  vigorous  conviction  in  a  strong  na- 
ture that  nothing  is  good  or  worth  living  for  but 
what  is  holy.  The  play  of  Socrates'  moral  life, 
though  so  stern  and  uncompromising,  was  not 
forced  or  hard.  As  Montaigne  finely  said,  "  He 
made  his  soul  move  a  natural  and  common  mo- 
tion, and  raised  himself,  not  by  starts  but  by  com- 
plexion, to  the  highest  pitch  of  vigor."  It  is  com- 
paratively easy  to  pay  the  respect  of  being  solemn 
and  sad  before  the  Infinite  Justice  and  Goodness, 
but  to  see  them  steadily  and  be  cheerful  is  a 
deeper  worship.  It  is  common  to  acknowledge 
them  as  law  and  adore  them,  but  it  is  only  by  the 


1 36  Socrates. 

rarest  spirits  that  they  are  seen  as  life  and  accepted 
as  the  soul's  treasure  and  joy.  Socrates  did  not 
feel  that  a  man  should  lie  in  the  embrace  of  the 
spiritual  laws  as  on  a  bed  of  bull-briers,  but  that 
the  soul  should  feel  secure,  protected,  and  at  home 
in  them,  as  if  cushioned  in  a  nest  of  down. 

And  he  was  able  to  make  practical  religious 
themes  subjects  of  easy  and  honest  conversation. 
We  imagine  that  they  are  for  set,  stately,  or  heated 
address,  for  preaching,  not  for  talk.  Generally, 
if  the  purest  saintly  man  starts  such  topics  with  a 
friend,  alone  or  in  the  house,  the  ledger  is  closed, 
or  the  book  is  shut ;  the  wife  stops  knitting  ;  the 
children  sit  stiff,  and  the  soul  takes  a  prim  and 
rigid  posture.  There  is  no  communion  ;  the  tones 
of  the  speaker  have  no  fresh  inflections;  the 
dialect  spoken  is  not  that  of  the  poem,  the  ex- 
change, and  the  press,  but  the  language  has  a 
musty,  sepulchral  smell.  Socrates,  however,  talked 
with  men  about  these  things  as  a  physician  con- 
verses on  symptoms  and  prescriptions,  the  un- 
healthly  diet  that  has  been  indulged,  and  what 
the  patient  must  do  to  regain  vigor.  Begin  to 
talk  with  him  on  painting  or  housekeeping,  wrest- 
ling, rhetoric,  or  poetry,  and  soon  you  are  on  the 
smooth  and  pleasant  slope  that  slides  you  so 
gracefully  into  the  depths  of  moral  life.  The 
tones  are  calm,  the  illustrations  clear,  various,  and 
lively,  and  the  talker  finds  that  the  law  of  duty  is 
as  entertaining  a  theme  as  the  law  of  symmetry, 
and  needs  no  more  take  the  lustre  from  the  eye 


Socrates.  137 

than  a  discourse  of  botany  or  music.  The  in- 
tense earnestness  of  Socrates  was  lubricated  and 
made  genial  by  his  humor.  His  life  was  as  loyal 
as  the  still  tidal  currents  of  the  seas,  and  the 
upper  waves  might  frolic  and  foam  without  detri- 
ment to  his  health  or  to  the  spiritual  landscape 
of  the  world. 

We  might  speak  here,  too,  at  some  length  of 
his  love  of  men.  He  worshipped  truth  and  right, 
and  he  loved  men  because  of  their  capacity  to 
know  and  serve  what  is  best  in  the  universe.  The 
greatness  and  priceless  worth  of  a  soul  was  his 
frequent  theme.  Never  was  there  a  sterner  spir- 
itual republican.  Titles  and  place  were  dim  to 
his  eye  before  the  faculty  of  comprehending  the 
just  and  living  for  what  is  good.  This  faculty  he 
saw  in  the  artisan  as  in  the  blood  aristocrat,  the 
wealthy  merchant,  and  the  lordly  sophist.  His 
missionary  sincerity  and  love  of  men  were  seen 
in  this,  that  discussion  with  a  cook  or  a  slave  in 
Athens  was  as  delightful  to  him,  if  it  was  honest 
and  earnest,  and  could  lift  the  mind  an  inch  above 
its  ordinary  plane,  as  banquet  disquisitions  and  con- 
ference with  the  greatest  men  of  Greece.  Simon 
the  bridle-cutter  published  a  set  of  conversa- 
tions held  by  Socrates  in  his  shop  with  the  stray 
visitants,  of  all  degrees  of  social  standing,  that 
happened  in.  Such  is  a  slight  sketch  of  the 
mental  qualities  of  a  man  who  seemed  to  be  a 
compound  of  Wilkes,  Franklin,  Johnson,  and 
Coleridge.  He  had  the  ludicrous  homeliness 


138  Socrates. 

and  entertaining  wit  of  the  first,  the  shrewd  sense 
and  practical  wisdom  of  the  second,  the  burly 
understanding,  social  royalty,  and  conversational 
methods  and  resources  of  the  third,  and  the  ana- 
lytic subtlety,  entrancing  eloquence,  and  mystical 
insight  of  the  last. 

We  come  now  to  the  closing  experiences  of  his 
career.  The  people  began  to  tire  of  him,  and  to 
fear  him,  towards  the  close  of  his  life.  During 
the  sway  of  the  thirty  tyrants  —  the  reign  of  ter- 
ror in  Athens  —  a  law  was  passed  that  no  one 
should  talk  philosophy  in  the  city.  Socrates  had 
used  some  striking  imagery,  a  little  while  before, 
on  the  unskilfulness  of  a  cowherd  who  should 
lose  part  of  the  drove  every  day,  and  see  the  rest 
growing  sick  and  weak  under  his  management. 
The  gentlemen  of  the  directory,  who  were  con- 
fiscating property  and  murdering  their  townsmen, 
did  not  like  such  bucolic  meditations,  and  one  of 
them,  a  depraved  wretch,  the  Greek  Marat,  could 
recall  a  conversation  in  which  Socrates  had  en- 
lightened him  in  company  on  the  spiritual  dignity 
and  worthiness  of  a  pig.  No  sooner  had  Soc- 
rates heard  of  the  law  than  he  waited  upon  the 
rulers,  to  have  a  little  conversation  by  which  his 
uncertainty  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  decree  might 
be  removed.  "Pray  tell  me,"  said  he,  "whether  you 
take  philosophy,  as  stated  in  the  statute,  to  con- 
sist in  reasoning  right  or  reasoning  wrong,  since, 
if  you  mean  the  first,  we  must  beware  how  we 
reason  right;  if  the  latter,  the  consequence  is 


Socrates.  139 

plain  we  must  mend  our  reasoning."  The  impu- 
dence was  sublime  ;  it  was  like  a  Frenchman 
joking  Tinville  with  the  guillotine  before  his  eyes  ; 
and  one  of  the  board,  choking  with  rage,  replied  : 
"  We  will  give  you  terms  easy  to  be  understood  ; 
refrain  altogether  from  talking  with  young  men." 
Here  was  a  chance  for  definitions.  "  Suppose," 
said  Socrates,  "  I  want  to  buy  something  of  a  mer- 
chant, must  n't  I  ask  the  price  if  the  man  is  un- 
der thirty  ? "  "  We  don't  prohibit  that ;  but  keep 
a  proper  distance  from  carpenters,  smiths,  and 
shoemakers,  and  let  us  have  no  more  examples 
from  them."  "  Then  I  am  not  to  concern  myself 
any  longer  with  justice  and  piety,  and  the  rules 
of  right  and  wrong  ? "  "  By  Jove,  you  must  not ; 
and,  Socrates,  don't  trouble  yourself  any  further 
with  the  herdsmen,  lest  you  occasion  the  loss 
of  more  cattle."  Those  miscreants  did  not  hold 
power  long  enough  after  this  to  kill  him,  but,  a 
year  or  two  following,  his  case  was  brought  before 
the  tribunal  of  the  people,  three  accusers  appear- 
ing against  him,  with  an  indictment  that  held 
three  counts,  —  that  Socrates  did  not  believe  the 
gods  whom  the  city  held  sacred  ;  that  he  designed 
to  introduce  new  deities ;  that  he  corrupted  the 
youth. 

It  was  one  of  the  most  singular  and  most  inter- 
esting trials  recorded  in  history.  Socrates  was 
seventy  years  old,  and  was  really  arraigned  before 
his  five  hundred  judges  for  being  a  universal  cen- 
sor and  intolerable  bore.  A  crowd  of  his  friends 


140  Socrates. 

attended  him,  among  them  Plato.  After  the  open- 
ing of  the  case  by  Melitus,  Socrates  was  permitted 
to  speak  in  his  own  behalf.  Fearing  that  his 
bearing  would  not  be  most  conciliatory  to  the 
benches,  the  rhetorician  Lysias  had  been  induced 
to  prepare  an  artistic  and  elaborate  defence,  which 
Socrates  was  urged  to  read,  with  the  assurance 
that  it  must  produce  acquittal.  The  inward  voice, 
however,  opposed  the  plan.  "Think  you,"  said 
he  to  his  friend,  "  I  have  not  spent  my  whole  life 
in  preparing  for  this  very  thing  ? "  Finely  has 
Montaigne  said  :  "  Should  a  suppliant  voice  have 
been  heard  out  of  the  mouth  of  Socrates  ;  that 
lofty  virtue  have  struck  sail  in  the  very  height  of 
its  glory ;  and  his  rich  and  powerful  nature  have 
committed  its  defence  to  Art,  and  in  her  highest 
proof  have  renounced  truth  and  simplicity,  the 
ornaments  of  his  speaking,  to  adorn  and  deck 
itself  with  the  embellishments  of  figures  and  the 
equivocations  of  a  premeditated  speech?"  He 
did  not  renounce  truth,  and  simplicity.  He  cross- 
questioned  his  chief  accusers  sufficiently  to  show 
the  falsity  of  the  charges  in  their  spirit,  and  then 
his  talk  was  an  impeachment  of  Athens,  not  a 
defence  of  his  own  career.  "  When  your  generals 
at  Pohdara  and  Delium  assigned  my  place  in  the 
battle,  I  remained  there  and  faced  the  peril  of 
slaughter ;  and  strange  would  it  be,  if,  when  the 
Deity  has  assigned  my  duty  to  pass  my  life  in  the 
study  of  philosophy  and  the  examination  of  others, 
I  should,  through  fear  of  death  or  anything  else, 


Socrates.  141 

desert  my  post."  His  serene  haughtiness  and 
affectionate  assertion  of  superiority  surprised  his 
enemies,  and  determined  the  judges  to  put  his 
temper  to  the  final  strain.  They  voted,  and  out 
of  the  immense  ballot  a  paltry  majority  of  six 
condemned  him.  His  accuser  proposed  the  pen- 
alty of  death.  The  defendant  had  one  oppor- 
tunity remaining  to  conciliate  the  judges  by  an 
humble  confession,  a  petition  for  mercy,  or  a 
proposition  of  some  different  penalty.  "  I  know 
not,"  said  he,  "  whether  death  is  an  evil  or  no.  I 
will  not  choose  imprisonment,  for  I  do  not  like  it ; 
and  why  should  I  say  exile  ?  A  fine  life,  at  my 
age,  to  go  out  wandering,  and  driven  from  city  to 
city  !  If  I  award  what  I  think  I  actually  deserve, 
I  should  say  a  public  maintenance  in  the  Pryta- 
neum.  I  am  a  poor  man,  and  need  leisure  to  be 
your  benefactor,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  I  deserve 
such  an  honor  more  than  one  who  has  been  vic- 
torious at  the  Olympic  games  in  a  horse-race. 
Perhaps,  however,  I  could  pay  you  a  small  fine ; 
about  fifteen  dollars  is  the  top  of  my  means.  But 
Plato  here,  and  Crito,  offer  to  be  surety  for  thirty 
times  that  sum.  I  therefore  name  that  as  my 
fine."  Four  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  was  a  cheap 
valuation  of  him  even  at  seventy,  but  he  had 
tossed  his  life  away.  The  enraged  judges  pro- 
nounced sentence  of  death  by  a  heavy  vote.  His 
friends  were  in  great  distress,  but  his  calmness 
rose  to  majesty,  and  his  playfulness  to  the  highest 
eloquence.  "  If,"  said  he  in  closing,  "  death  is 


142  Socrates. 

a  removal  from  hence  to  another  place,  and  if  all 
the  dead  are  there,  what  greater  blessing  can  there 
be  than  this,  my  judges  ?  At  what  price  would 
you  not  estimate  a  conference  with  Orpheus  and 
Musaeus,  Hesiod  and  Homer?  For  me  to  so- 
journ there  would  be  admirable,  when  I  should 
meet  with  Palamedes,  and  Ajax  the  son  of  Tela- 
mon,  and  others  of  the  ancients  who  died  by  an 
unjust  sentence.  At  what  price  would  not  any 
one  estimate  the  opportunity  of  questioning  him 
who  led  that  mighty  army  against  Troy,  or  Ulysses, 
or  Sysiphus,  or  ten  thousand  others  whom  one 
might  mention,  both  men  and  women  ?  "  Heaven, 
to  his  imagination,  had  always  been  an  atmos- 
phere of  refined  and  vigorous  talk.  How  'fine 
and  fitting  that  the  old  man's  fancy  should  even 
then  revel  in  the  rich  society  and  the  glorious 
discussions  to  which  the  friendly  vengeance  of 
his  foes  would  send  him  !  He  begged  his  judges 
to  punish  his  sons  as  they  grew  up,  if  they  cared 
more  for  riches  than  virtue  j  he  assured  his  ac- 
cusers that  he  bore  no  resentment  to  them  ;  he 
looked  around  for  the  last  time  upon  the  Athens 
which  he  loved  and  the  citizens  it  was  his  great 
aim  to  serve,  and  left  the  agora  amid  his  heart- 
broken friends  to  sleep  fettered  in  the  prison. 

The  sentence  could  not  legally  take  effect  for 
thirty  days.  During  that  time  his  rich  friend, 
Crito,  through  some  briber)',  made  preparations  for 
his  escape,  and  went  to  him  one  morning  before 
daybreak  to  perfect  the  plan.  He  was  sleeping 


C  V 


.X* 


quietly,  and  said,  when  awaked,  "  The  tirhe/otynv 
death  draws  near  :  for  in  my  dream  just  now  a  I . 
beautiful  and  majestic  woman  arrayed  in  whlte^^s?*^ 
seemed  to  approach  me  and  to  say,  '  Socrates, 
three  days  and  you  will  reach  fertile  Phthia ! ' ' 
Crito  told  him  he  had  come  to  save  him,  and  take 
him  to  Thessaly,  where  he  could  be  secure  and 
happy.  But  the  old  prisoner  calmly  reasoned 
down  all  his  entreaties,  and  pictured  to  him  how 
the  personified  laws  of  Athens  would  reproach 
him  for  his  ingratitude  if  he  should  violate  them 
then,  how  droll  it  would  seem  for  him  to  escape 
wrapped  in  a  disguise  of  cloaks  and  skins,  and 
how  much  better  it  was  to  suffer  than  to  commit 
injustice.  "  These  things  boom  in  my  ears,"  said 
he,  "like  the  swelling  music  of  flutes,  and  make 
me  deaf,  my  dear  friend  Crito,  to  all  you  say." 
He  stayed  to  meet  his  fate.  During  his  confine- 
ment he  versified  the  fables  of  ^Esop,  and  com- 
posed a  hymn  to  Apollo,  in  order,  as  he  said,  if 
possible,  to  obey  and  fulfil  a  dream  which  fre- 
quently warned  him  in  life  to  apply  himself  to 
music. 

The  pages  of  Plato  give  us  a  full  account  of 
the  last  day's  intercourse  between  himself  and 
friends  in  prison.  After  taking  leave  of  his  wife, 
the  most  of  the  day  was  occupied  with  a  long  and 
thorough  treatment  of  the  question  of  immor- 
tality. 

His  friend  Crito  begged  him  not  to  talk  ear- 
nestly and  steadily,  for  the  jailer  had  said  that 


144  Socrates. 

bodily  heat  would  counteract  the  poison,  and 
make  his  death  more  painful.  "  Then  let  them 
give  it  to  me  twice  or  thrice,"  he  said,  and  went 
on  with  the  discussion.  The  day  wore  away 
while  that  circle  recounted  the  arguments,  pre- 
sentiments, and  myths  that  justify  to  reason  the 
expectation  of  another  life.  As  the  sunset  drew 
on,  and  the  talk  must  close,  a  friend  timidly  asked, 
"  How  shall  we  bury  you  ?  "  "  Just  as  you  please," 
said  he,  with  a  smile,  "  if  only  you  can  catch  me 
and  I  do  not  escape  you."  Here,  as  always,  his 
pleasantry  was  the  cool  expression  of  his  strongest 
faith.  "  Say  that  you  bury  my  body,  and  do  it  as 
is  pleasing  to  you  and  most  agreeable  to  our  laws." 
He  bathed,  bade  farewell  to  his  children,  who  were 
brought  in,  and  then  signified  that  he  was  ready 
to  the  executioner,  who  said,  with  flowing  tears, 
that  he  was  the  most  noble,  meek,  and  excellent 
man  that  ever  entered  the  prison.  The  sun  was 
not  quite  set  when  the  hemlock  juice  was  brought 
to  him  in  a  cup.  He  inquired  calmly  what  the 
symptoms  would  be,  and  when  he  might  know 
that  death  was  near;  and,  praying  that  his  depart- 
ure might  be  happy,  drank  it  slowly,  looking  stead- 
ily at  the  jailer,  without  trembling  or  change  of 
color.  His  friends  till  that  moment  had  borne 
up  stoically  ;  but  then  they  yielded  to  their  emo- 
tions, and  one  of  them  screamed  wildly  in  his 
agony.  But  Socrates,  still  walking,  rebuked  and 
cheered  them  all,  and  at  last  lay  down  to  die. 
"  Crito,"  said  he,  "  we  owe  a  cock  to  ^Esculapius ; 


Socrates.  145 

pay  it ;  do  not  neglect  it " ;  and  his  spirit  fled. 
^Esculapius  was  the  god  of  medicine  and  health. 
A  pious  Greek  made  offerings  to  him  after  being 
cured  of  any  serious  disease.  The  last  words  of 
Socrates  were  an  enigmatical  assurance  to  his 
friends  that  by  the  death  of  his  body  the  disease 
of  an  earthly  life  was  being  cured,  and  his  spirit 
restored  to  its  native  health. 

The  judges  of  Socrates  are  forgotten ;  his 
accusers  are  remembered  with  infamy  by  asso- 
ciation with  his  name  ;  his  prison  is  one  of  the 
sacred  places  in  the  memory  of  the  race ;  while 
his  career  is  the  strength  of  reformers  now,  and 
preaches  to  all  men  the  majesty  of  self-sacrifice 
and  the  glory  of  devotion  ;  and  the  loyalty  of  his 
life,  the  firmness  of  his  principles,  and  the  seren- 
ity of  his  bearing  in  his  last  hours  fortify  more 
powerfully  than  his  arguments  our  faith  in  immor- 
tality. 

If  his  friends  had  had  insight  they  might  have 
gone  away  from  that  cell  where  the  body  of  Soc- 
rates lay  motionless  and  cold,  with  a  conviction, 
a  sense  of  certainty,  that  such  a  spirit  was  not  ex- 
tinguished. His  temper  and  impregnable  faith, 
when  death  was  approaching  to  take  him  by  the 
hand  and  lead  him  into  the  shadow,  are  demon- 
stration to  our  moral  instincts  that  it  came  as  a 
friend  to  bear  him  up  to  a  more  congenial  sphere, 
and  bid  him  live  more  intensely  and  usefully  in 
other  scenes. 

Why,  not  a  rigid  bone  of  his  lifeless  body,  not 
7  J 


146  Socrates. 

a  hardening  muscle  or  useless  nerve  of  the  stiff 
frame  that  once  obeyed  his  will,  was  to  be  annihi- 
lated. God's  economical  laws  took  care  of  them, 
dissolved  them,  mingled  them  with  dust  and  air, 
and  turned  them  to  new  uses.  They  are  living 
somewhere  yet.  Not  a  particle  of  his  frame  has 
perished  in  the  great  treasury  of  matter.  And 
has  that  mind  dissolved,  that  robust  spiritual 
greatness,  that  muscular,  invincible  holiness,  that 
inward  eye  which  saw  the  light  of  eternal  truth  as 
the  steady  flame  of  a  zenith  star?  Is  there  no 
world  of  spirits  to  receive  such  realities  as  these  ? 
Must  not  such  a  nature  have  been  a  precious  jewel 
of  God  while  it  lived  and  served  him  here  ?  And  is 
the  Almighty  so  penurious  of  matter,  and  so  waste- 
ful of  the  wealth  of  perfect  virtue,  that  he  saves 
carefully  each  ounce  of  saintly  servants'  bodies, 
and  permits  their  souls  to  be  extinguished  forever 
by  a  gill  of  poison,  or  shrivelled  by  a  fever,  or  con- 
sumed in  a  wreath  of  flame  ?  We  had  better  not 
believe  that  until  we  have  emptied  the  universe  of 
all  that  is  divine.  The  life,  the  moral  greatness, 
of  Socrates,  is  an  argument  for  immortality  such 
as  his  logic  could  not  frame,  nor  scepticism  de- 
stroy; and  thus  his  prison  is  a  bright  spot  in 
human  history,  for  it  is  a  buttress  of  the  soul's 
immortal  hope. 

The  most  remarkable  saying,  perhaps,  that  has 
been  reported  of  Socrates  is  this  :  "  That  in  re- 
spect to  these  great  questions  we  ought  to  take 
the  best  of  human  reasonings,  that  which  is  most 


Socrates.  147 

difficult  to  be  confuted,  and  embark  on  it  as  on  a 
raft,  so  to  sail  through  life  amid  its  storms,  unless 
we  could  be  carried  more  safely  in  a  surer  convey- 
ance furnished  in  some  Divine  instruction."  Down 
the  River  of  Life,  by  its  Athenian  banks,  he  had 
floated  upon  his  raft  of  reason  serene,  in  cloudy  as 
in  smiling  weather,  for  seventy  years.  And  now 
the  night  is  rushing  down,  and  he  has  reached  the 
mouth  of  the  stream,  and  the  great  ocean  is  be- 
fore him,  dim  heaving  in  the  dusk.  But  he  betrays 
no  fear.  There  is  land  ahead,  he  thought;  eter- 
nal continents  there  are,  that  rise  in  constant  light 
beyond  the  gloom.  He  trusted  still  in  the  raft  his 
soul  had  built,  and  with  a  brave  farewell  to  the 
few  true  friends  who  stood  by  him  on  the  shore 
he  put  out  into  the  darkness,  a  moral  Columbus, 
trusting  in  his  haven  on  the  faith  of  an  idea. 

1851. 


IV. 

SIGHT  AND  INSIGHT. 

I  ASK  your  attention  to  some  thoughts  that 
naturally  range  themselves  under  the  for- 
mula, Sight  and  Insight. 

Vision  is  the  most  glorious  privilege  of  hu- 
manity. The  eye  is  our  royal  endowment  among 
the  senses.  Physically,  we  are  insignificant  specks 
on  the  earth's  surface ;  but,  by  reason  of  the  mar- 
vellous and  exquisite  eye,  the  loveliness  of  the 
earth  is  portion  of  our  furniture.  We  stand  on 
less  than  a  square  foot  of  soil,  and  the  horizon 
is  the  wall  of  our  dwelling,  the  zenith  the  roof  of 
our  home.  One  of  our  most  marked  distinctions 
from  animals  is  this,  that  their  eyes  are  the  in- 
struments of  instinct  and  the  servants  of  greed, 
while  the  eye  of  man  is  a  general  organ,  related 
to  the  universe  as  a  vast,  inspiring  spectacle,  and 
serving  as  the  window  of  the  mind  and  soul. 

There  is  a  doctrine  that  all  our  knowledge 
comes  through  the  senses,  and  chiefly  by  the  eye. 
This  is  false.  Sight  of  itself  takes  in  only  the 
surface-coloring  of  nature.  The  senses  supply 
no  knowledge,  for  they  convey  only  impressions, 


Sight  and  Insight.  149 

never  ideas.  We  must  see  in  the  first  place  that 
the  senses,  which  seem  to  furnish  all  our  knowl- 
edge, are  simply  reporters.  The  all-important 
question  as  to  knowledge  is,  What  is  at  the  other 
end  of  the  sense,  or  nerve,  to  receive  the  report  ? 
The  eagle  has  a  stronger  eye  than  man.  But  set 
the  Apollo  Belvedere  before  it,  and  it  sees  only  the 
articulated  whiteness  of  a  piece  of  stone.  The 
human  mind,  out  of  the  same  sensations,  dis- 
cerns a  glorious  statue.  The  stag  has  a  better  ear 
than  man.  But  let  it  listen  to  an  orchestra  and 
it  reports  only  a  mob  of  tones,  which,  when  they 
break  upon  the  human  nerve,  are  disposed  instantly 
into  a  sonata  or  a  symphony.  Put  a  moss-rose 
to  the  nostrils  of  a  hound  and  see  if  it  will  awaken, 
through  his  keen  scent,  any  emotions  of  poetic 
delight.  The  senses  of  an  animal  report  all  that 
senses  themselves  can  catch;  but  their  owners 
do  not  have  the  faculties  to  arrange  and  interpret 
the  sensations,  —  and  so  having  eyes  they  see  not, 
and  having  ears  they  hear  not.  It  is  mind  that 
draws  meaning  out  of  the  reports  which  the  senses 
make  ;  and  so  what  they  tell  depends  on  the 
grade  of  the  faculty  to  which  they  tell. 

All  knowledge  is,  therefore,  the  result  of  in- 
sight, and  education  is  a  process  of  insight.  How 
immense  the  scale  which  the  human  being  travels 
in  the  training  of  his  vision  !  The  infant  begins 
by  seeing  everything  as  on  the  eye  itself.  The 
furniture  of  the  chamber,  and  the  parent's  face, 
toys,  trees,  and  sky,  are  a  confused  mass  of  color, 


150  Sight  and  Insight. 

and  seem  to  belong  somehow  to  the  little 
stranger's  personality.  It  must  learn,  at  first,  to 
push  the  world  off  from  itself  by  attributing  dis- 
tance and  size  to  the  objects  which  the  senses 
grasp  ;  and  at  last  it  comes  to  be  a  Herschel, 
with  the  globe  as  the  pedestal  of  its  imperial  eye, 
measuring  the  awful  distance  of  the  Pleiades, 
gazing  at  Orion  sculptured  in  light  on  the  black 
walls  of  space,  with  his  star-hilted  dagger  and  his 
club  of  knotted  suns. 

Let  us  take  up  the  suggestion  of  this  last  state- 
ment, and  learn  what  has  been  done,  almost  within 
a  century,  in  laying  out  the  scale  of  nature. 
How  narrow,  in  contrast  with  ours,  was  the  uni- 
verse into  which  an  old  Greek  gazed  through  the 
shadows  of  night ;  or  David,  when,  looking  up 
with  nothing  but  eyesight  as  an  instrument  to 
help  him,  he  chanted  to  the  rude  music  of  his 
harp  the  words,  "  The  firmament  showeth  his 
handiwork " !  Can  anything  be  more  amazing 
than  a  simple  statement  of  the  triumph  of  thought 
in  laying  out  the  scale  of  nature  ?  Think  what 
a  few  astronomers  have  done.  Think  of  those 
dots  of  creamy  light,  that,  in  connection  with  our 
globe,  are  found  to  belong  to  our  solar  system. 
Our  eyes  can  detect  no  apparent  difference  in 
their  distance  from  us  or  from  our  sun.  But  con- 
sider how  the  human  intellect,  represented  in  a 
few  students  that  "  outwatch  the  Bear "  in  lonely 
towers,  keeping  its  greedy  eye  upon  them,  has 
seen  them  swell  into  majestic  orbs  floating  and 


Sight  and  Insight.  151 

waltzing  in  immensity ;  how  it  has  spaced  them 
millions  of  miles  apart,  each  cutting  a  circle 
within  the  track  of  the  other  j  how  it  has  caught 
the  plane  on  which  they  move,  seeing  them  as 
they  swing  and  sway,  now  dipping,  now  rising 
in  their  ceaseless  sweep ;  how  it  has  measured 
mountains  upon  them  and  discovered  snows  that, 
on  some  of  them,  whiten  the  poles  and  melt  in 
summer-time;  how  it  has  weighed  their  mass, 
telling  how  many  myriads  of  tons  each  of  those 
little  dots  includes,  that  we  write  poetry  to  as  the 
morning  or  evening  star,  as  if  it  had  a  Titan 
scale  to  put  them  in,  with  a  beam  poised  at  the 
zenith  ;  how,  not  content  with  running  its  line  out 
hundreds  of  millions  of  miles  m  constructing  this 
domestic  solar  system,  it  has  stood  on  the  spin- 
ning disk  of  a  planet  so  far  out  in  space  as  to  be 
invisible  to  the  naked  eye,  and  then  cast  the  lasso 
of  its  mathematics  still  beyond  into  the  darkness 
and  reined  up  another  globe,  whose  existence  it 
had  guessed,  and  dragged  it  with  its  filial  moons 
into  the  light  of  science ;  how  it  has  leaped  upon 
the  parent  orb,  torn  open  the  blazing  vesture  of 
the  sun,  looked  in  upon  his  dark  substance  and 
stupendous  ribs,  wound  its  measuring  line  around 
his  awful  surface,  and  told  his  weight ;  how  it  has 
followed  the  track  of  the  comet  fire-ships,  reck- 
oned the  leagues  they  rush  into  the  bleak,  black 
ether,  and  prophesied  their  return  ;  and  how,  not 
satisfied  with  all  these  trophies,  its  look  has 
broken  the  spangled  roofing  of  the  night  into  an 


152  Sight  and  Insight. 

airy  and  immeasurable  arch,  within  which  the 
solar  system  is  a  dot  and  its  motions  but  a  flicker  ; 
how,  after  years  of  trial,  it  has  found  one  of  those 
tremulous  suns,  against  which  it  might  lean  its 
ladder  of  spider  threads  and  light,  and  then  has 
mounted  on  it  into  the  gallery  of  our  firmament, 
probed  through  the  ranks,  five  hundred  deep,  of 
orbs  that  swing  in  its  dome,  —  yes,  lifted  itself  out 
upon  the  roof  of  this  star-tiled  St.  Peter's  of 
space,  and  gazed  off  thence  upon  the  milky  gleam 
of  the  spires  of  other  cathedral  firmaments  that 
rise  in  the  astral  city  of  God  ! 

This  is  the  victory  of  the  human  mind  over  the 
deception  which  the  eye  would  practise  upon  it  as 
to  the  scale  of  nature.  Modern  astronomy  is  a" 
trophy  of  intellectual  insight.  When  any  of  us 
are  tempted  to  distrust  propositions  and  princi- 
ples simply  because  they  seem  opposed  to  the 
settled  material  order  of  society,  and  appear  con- 
tradictory to  the  instincts  of  selfishness,  let  us 
reflect  that  we  begin  to  live  intellectually  in  na- 
ture only  when  we  grasp  a  principle  that  pitches 
the  sun  out  of  his  path  in  the  heavens,  that  dwin- 
dles the  earth  to  a  little  marble  in  space,  and  that 
shrivels  the  visible  wonders  of  the  sky  to  motes 
floating  in  a  flood  of  luminous  vitality. 

All  this  grandeur  of  result  has  been  made  pos- 
sible by  the  most  careful  and  reverent  scrutiny  of 
the  most  insignificant  facts.  The  human  intellect 
was  made  to  conquer  nature  by  watching  and 
following  the  most  delicate  hints  from  facts  which 
everybody  observes. 


Sight  and  Insight.  153 

Every  pebble,  every  stick,  is  an  index  pointing 
a  hundred  ways.  There  is  a  path  from  it  out  into 
chemistry,  into  statics,  into  the  laws  of  heat  and 
light,  into  forces  of  gravitation  and  electricity, 
into  atomic  and  organic  sympathies,  —  into  the 
whole  circle  of  the  published  wisdom  of  God. 

The  geologist  can  see  no  further  into  a  mill- 
stone than  any  boor  can.  But  he  can  see  a  great 
deal  further  into  the  solid  world,  though  no  more 
facts  are  presented  to  his  eye.  Both  of  them  ride 
this  globe  as  mere  gnats  on  the  back  of  a  wild 
rhinoceros.  Yet  the  first  detects  the  depth  and 
nature  of  the  intestines  of  the  creature  that  flies 
with  him  twenty  miles  a  second  ;  follows  the  wrin- 
kles and  untwists  the  plaitings  of  its  rocky  hide, 
reads  its  age  on  its  alpine  warts ;  writes  its  biog- 
raphy from  its  pulpy  infancy  till  its  bones  had 
hardened,  and  up  through  the  wild  passions  of 
its  youth  to  its  present  maturity ;  and  is  able  to 
describe  passages  of  its  fortunes,  a  hundred  thou- 
sand years  ago,  as  clearly  as  he  discerns  the  color 
of  any  district  of  its  skin  to-day. 

The  vast  proportions  of  science  are  reared  by 
the  interlocking  of  ordinary  facts  through  the 
allusions  that  invest  them.  And  more  than  half 
the  distance  from  ignorance  to  science  is  accom- 
plished when  a  man  learns  to  observe,  to  concen- 
trate his  mind  into  his  vision,  so  that  he  shall  see 
accurately  and  intensely  what  Nature  has  set  be- 
fore him.  It  is  only  when  he  sees  the  thing  itself 
.  strongly,  that  he  can  detect  the  shadowy  lines 


154  Sight  and  Insight. 

around  it  of  vaster  and  modest  facts,  like  the 
dusky  thread  that  loops  the  space  within  the  rim 
of  the  new  moon,  hinting  the  whole  orb  while  only 
a  segment  is  burnished  with  light. 

There  is  an  old  proverb  that  "What  is  ever 
seen  is  never  seen."  Science  is  now  showing  us 
what  undrainable  meaning  lurks  in  the  minute 
and  common.  Almost  everything  is  told  in  any- 
thing, if  the  eye  that  looks  through  the  sense  is 
patient.  Cuvier  learned  how  to  build  up  the 
whole  animal  from  any  single  bone.  And  the 
microscope  now  enables  us  to  tell  from  a  flake 
of  any  bone  what  creature  and  what  part  of  the 
creature  it  belonged  to,  and  at  what  age  of  the 
world  it  lived.  I  was  conversing,  not  a  great 
while  ago,  with  the  most  celebrated  chemist  of 
Massachusetts,  and  learned  from  him  that  a  grain 
of  corn  contains  material  enough  to  lecture  about 
for  a  month.  Its  structure  is  so  complicated,  its 
secrets  so  intricate,  its  relations  to  the  finest  and 
broadest  forces  of  the  universe  so  various  and 
minute,  that  it  is  inexhaustible  in  ministries  of 
instruction,  wonder,  and  delight.  Just  as  it  is 
said  of  some  Western  roads,  which  begin  spacious 
and  grand,  that  they  at  last  dwindle  to  a  squir- 
rel-track and  run  up  a  tree,  —  so  we  may  say, 
with  sober  truth,  that  forces  which  guard  the 
stateliest  avenues  of  the  universe  run  back,  by 
convergent  lines,  till  they  meet  in  the  mystery  of 
a  kernel  of  corn. 

Agassiz  asks  only  for  one  scale  and  will  draw 


Sight  and  Insight.  155 

you  the  form  of  the  fish  that  wore  it,  tell  every 
fibre  of  its  structure,  the  kind  of  waters  it  lives  in, 
and  the  nature  of  the  food  it  takes.  •  From  a  fos- 
sil scale  he  sketched  the  shape  and  size  of  a 
fish  unlike  any  in  the  catalogues  of  science,  and 
has  seen  his  sagacity  verified  by  the  discovery  in 
another  country  of  a  petrified  swimmer  in  pre- 
adamite  seas  precisely  like  his  drawing. 

To  understand  anything  thoroughly,  we  must 
understand  all  its  relations ;  and  every  highly 
organized  product  in  nature  is  related  to  the 
universe.  St.  Augustine,  fourteen  hundred  years 
ago,  ridiculed  the  dying  polytheism  of  Rome, 
which  provided  a  separate  deity  for  every  process  of 
nature,  by  showing  that,  on  such  a  theory,  it  would 
require  a  hundred  goddesses  to  weave  a  single 
flower,  so  many  energies  are  involved  in  the  work. 

A  distinguished  living  geologist  has  published 
a  pamphlet  on  the  geological  wonders  that  some 
pebbles  hold.  Taking  his  hint,  suppose  that  we 
follow  it  into  other  fields,  asking  you  if  you  under- 
stand a  pebble.  What,  not  understand  a  com- 
mon piece  of  stone  that  weighs  an  ounce  or  two ! 
Let  us  see.  What  is  that  you  call  its  weight? 
It  is  the  pull  of  the  earth  upon  it  in  your  hand, 
the  relation  between  its  mass  and  the  earth's 
mass.  Why  does  the  earth  pull  thus  at  it  ?  It 
is  the  action  of  what  we  call  the  force  of  gravita- 
tion. Why  does  it  pull  so  hard  ?  If  the  average 
substance  of  the  earth  were  no  denser  than  the 
ground  directly  beneath  our  feet  it  would  not  pull 


156  Sight  and  Insight. 

so  powerfully.  That  ounce  or  two  of  weight  is, 
therefore,  the  sign  and  proof  that  the  great  globe 
is  heavier  as  we  descend,  more  weighty  as  a  whole, 
than  if  it  were  all  made  of  granite.  Thus  the 
intensity  of  its  pull  on  the  pebble  opens  into  its 
relations  to  the  mass  of  the  sun  and  the  mechan- 
ical structure  of  the  solar  system. 

Why,  too,  is  the  pebble  solid  in  your  hand? 
Why  is  it  not  a  mass  of  sand  ?  The  force  of  co- 
hesion is  the  answer.  But  why,  if  you  pulverize 
it,  will  it  not  unite  so  again  ?  Why  will  not  the 
whole  pressure  you  can  bring  to  bear  upon  it  com- 
press it  as  tight  as  before  ?  What  are  the  condi- 
tions and  laws  of  that  force  ?  Answer  that  ques- 
tion and  you  know  a  great  deal. 

Break  the  pebble  open,  and  you  will  doubtless 
find  a  sparkling  piece  of  crystal  in  it.  Explain 
that.  A  new  force,  not  only  of  cohesion  but  of 
crystallization,  appears.  Tell  how  those  particles 
were  brought  into  that  shining  order,  with  angles 
and  points  as  regular  as  a  mathematician's  dia- 
gram. The  pebble  grows  more  serious. 

Melt  it,  you  make  it  a  liquid.  Increase  the 
heat,  you  reduce  it  to  two  or  three  gases.  It  was 
only  gases  knotted  and  clinched.  How  and  why 
did  they  combine  so  as  to  make  that  quality  of 
stone?  The  same  gases  appear  in  a  thousand 
different  kinds  of  matter.  Why  do  slight  variations 
in  their  proportions  produce  such  widely  different 
results  ?  The  mystery  of  atomic  combination  — 
the  fundamental  mystery  of  chemistry  —  starts  out 
of  the  stone. 


Sight  and  Insight.  157 

Again,  the  pebble  is  of  a  kind  different  from  the 
stone  in  its  neighborhood.  It  belongs  to  another 
stratum.  How  did  it  get  out  of  that  stratum  upon 
the  surface  of  the  earth  ?  Geology  must  come  in 
with  its  proofs  of  central  fires,  convulsions,  and 
mountain  upheavals  to  explain  it.  Room  for  an- 
other science  must  be  found  on  the  pebble. 

Its  shape,  too,  how  was  that  determined  ?  There 
are  scratches  on  it  that  icebergs  caused,  grinding 
over  the  face  of  the  inhabited  world.  There  are 
water-lines  in  it,  telling  that  it  has  lain  under  seas 
which  once  rolled  over  the  present  land.  Or  there 
are  fire-stains,  that  report  earthquake  eruptions  ages 
ago.  These  forces  must  all  be  united  into  a  sys- 
tem if  you  would  comprehend  the  pebble. 

Crack  it  and  you  will  find  a  little  fossil  in  it  of 
a  tribe  of  sea-creatures  now  extinct.  It  must  have 
sunk  into  it  when  the  pebble  was  fluid.  How 
many  ages  ago?  In  what  region  of  the  earth? 
How  was  the  creature  fed,  and  what  was  its  office? 

Then  the  color  of  the  pebble,  what  is  that  ? 
Why  are  not  all  things  of  the  same  hue?  The 
sun-ray  holds  several  tints.  How  do  they  blend 
into  colorless  light,  and  what  is  the  secret  by 
which  different  surfaces  reflect  and  absorb  such 
unlike  rays,  thus  suffusing  the  face  of  nature  with 
countless  tinges?  You  must  answer  this  to  ex- 
plain the  tint  of  the  pebble. 

The  crystal  beads,  too,  which  it  holds,  have 
magnetic  properties,  —  point  to  the  mystery  of 
electric  and  polar  currents.  There  are  some  old 


158  Sight  and  Insight. 

manuscripts,  called  "palimpsests,"  from  which  you 
can  rub  off  the  writing  and  find  another  under- 
neath, and  still  a  third  and  fourth  under  that,  —  all 
of  which  by  delicate  art  can  be  restored  and  read 
in  turn.  Thus  some  of  Cicero's  great  works  have 
been  discovered  under  other  and  later  writings. 

Is  not  the  pebble  a  marvellous  palimpsest,  hold- 
ing convulsions  of  the  earth  and  secrets  of  chem- 
istry and  astronomical  forces  written  in  it  ?  The 
"  sermon  "  in  a  common  "  stone  "  is  woven  of  all 
the  sciences.  The  man  who  understands  it  has 
insight  into  the  physical  system  of  the  world. 

In  fact,  the  story  of  science  in  relation  to 
nature  is  poetically  symbolized  in  a  story  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  which  perhaps  many  of  you  are 
familiar  with,  —  how  a  lady  rescued  her  captured 
lover  from  the  high  tower  in  which  he  was  impris- 
oned. His  case  seemed  hopeless ;  at  any  rate, 
what  could  she,  a  feeble  woman,  do  to  release 
him  ?  She  caught  a  beetle,  rubbed  some  honey 
on  its  nose,  tied  a  long  silk  thread  of  the  finest 
texture  around  its  body,  and  placed  the  insect  on 
the  lowest  round  of  the  stony  wall.  Smelling  the 
honey,  and  thinking  it  just  ahead,  the  beetle 
climbed  and  climbed,  trailing  the  delicate  thread, 
till  it  reached  the  window  of  the  captured  knight. 
He  caught  the  thread,  pulled  it  in  carefully,  and 
lo!  on  the  end  of  it  was  a  twine,  and  gathering  up 
the  twine  there  was  fastened  upon  that  a  rope,  and 
pulling  up  the  rope  he  secured  it  to  the  window 
bars  and  descended  safely  from  his  dungeon  tower. 


Sight  and  Insight.  159 

O,  the  wit  of  the  women  !  So  the  meanest  fact  has 
a  law  fastened  to  it,  which  reason  seizes  by  its  in- 
sight, and  at  the  end  of  that  law  another  and  still 
back  of  that  a  nobler  one,  till  at  last  the  central 
force  is  detected  and  the  sense-bound  thought  is 
free,  and  walks  in  the  broad  splendors  of  truth. 

The  chief  difference  between  a  very  wise  man 
in  natural  science  and  an  ignorant  one  is,  not  that 
the  first  is  acquainted  with  regions  invisible  to  the 
second,  away  from  common  sight  and  interest, 
but  that  he  understands  the  common  things  which 
the  second  only  sees. 

If  we  appreciated  such  facts  as  these  we  should 
be  delivered  from  the  danger  of  looking  outwardly 
into  large  and  blazing  wonders  of  space  for  pecul- 
iar revelations  of  the  Creator.  Some  persons 
dream  that  if  they  could  be  carried  away  from 
what  is  so  familiar  around  them  on  this  planet, 
and  see  the  wonders  of  far-off  skies  or  look  at  the 
harmonies  of  a  system  of  worlds,  they  would  have 
proofs  of  the  Infinite  One  which  are  denied  to 
them  now.  But  such  revelry  of  sight  would  not 
help  them.  It  is  insight  they  need.  The  Infinite 
is  not  revealed  in  scale  or  splendors  of  space,  but 
in  the  wisdom  that  is  manifest  in  facts  whatever 
be  their  scale.  And  nothing  less  than  Infinite 
Wisdom  is  expressed  in  a  daisy.  Whoever  looks 
beyond  the  life  and  growth  of  that,  with  an  appe- 
tite for  something  more  startling  and  stupendous 
as  a  proof  of  God's  existence,  is  in  an  atheistic 
atmosphere  now.  His  mind  has  divorced  nature 


160  Sight  and  Insight. 

from  intellect,  and  no  sight  or  external  logic  will 
weld  them  for  him.  If  a  daisy  can  live  without 
God  a  firmament  can.  The  true  process  is  not 
to  wring  out  an  Infinite  Mind  by  twisting  a  nebula, 
but  to  look  with  humility  and  gladness  into  each 
fact  of  nature  and  see  Him  reflected  as  in  the  face 
of  a  mirror  there. 

The  primal  distinction  in  eyes  is  that  some  see 
facts,  others  see  what  facts  stand  for,  and  the  de- 
grees of  this  difference  measure  the  whole  distance 
between  a  Bushman  and  Newton,  between  igno- 
rance and  knowledge. 

The  difference  between  sight  and  insight,  and 
the  power  of  insight,  are  illustrated  also  in  the 
domain  of  beauty.  It  is  not  the  senses  that  dis- 
cern the  outside  vesture  of  beauty  upon  the  world. 
You  never  surprise  a  dog,  deer,  or  bear  gazing 
with  satisfaction  at  the  loveliness  of  the  meadow, 
the  curve  of  a  river,  or  the  grandeur  of  a  moun- 
tain. They  see  all  the  facts  as  an  inventory  could 
be  taken  of  them,  but  not  the  charm  of  color, 
grace,  or  motion  into  which  the  details  blend. 

The  man  is  to  be  pitied  who  has  no  intellectual 
insight  into  the  truth  of  any  district  of  nature ; 
but  it  is  a  sadder  thing  to  see  a  man  on  whom  all 
bloom  is  wasted,  who  carries  an  eye  that  shaves 
the  twinkle  from  every  star,  who  disenchants 
the  light,  and,  wherever  he  moves,  brushes  the 
halo  from  nature.  One  of  the  vices  of  our  Amer- 
ican intellect  in  this  age  of  mechanism  is  its 
essentially  mechanical  conception  of  nature,  —  as 


Sight  and  Insight.  161 

though  the  solar  system  runs  by  clock-work  and 
the  stars  are  whirled  by  bands,  belts,  and  drums. 

It  was  a  typical  Yankee  who  said  once  to  a 
friend  of  mine  at  Niagara,  before  the  roar  of  the 
English  fall,  "Well,  I  snum,  I  don't  understand 
how  it  wallops  over  in  that  way.  I  'd  like  to  see 
the  whole  consarn  unscrewed  for  about  five  min- 
utes and  then  put  up  agin."  So  it  is  that  our 
universe  is  becoming  one  of  carpentry,  —  lathed 
and  plastered  together  with  constellations  clap- 
boarded  on  the  sky,  —  and  not  a  swimming  poem 
and  mystery. 

As  to  his  humanity,  a  man  would  be  an  un- 
speakable loser  to  give  up  the  power  of  enjoying 
a  landscape,  if  he  has  it  in  any  fine  degree,  for  a 
legal  title  to  all  the  land  in  New  England  ;  for  his 
soul  would  give  up  the  birthright  of  a  perpetual 
dividend  of  joy  from  the  infinite  art  by  which  all 
matter  is  moulded. 

The  insight  that  discerns  beauty  is  of  a  higher 
order  than  that  which  discerns  mathematical  truth. 
I  would  not  look  through  the  great  Cambridge 
telescope  at  the  present  comet,  if  the  sight  thus 
of  its  boiling  nucleus  and  its  more  voluminous 
trail  should  blunt,  afterwards,  the  perception  of 
its  exquisite  curve  so  tenderly  shaded  off  into  the 
gloom  of  the  zenith,  —  a  weird  scimitar  of  light, 
fit  for  the  hand  of  an  archangel.  Science  is  the 
prose  and  beauty  the  poetry  of  the  visible  world. 

But  one  of  the  noblest  triumphs  of  insight  is 
gained  when  the  truth  of  the  world,  as  read  by 


1 62  Sight  and  Insight. 

science,  is  itself  transmuted  into  beauty.  One 
great  value  of  scientific  education  is,  that  it  en- 
larges immensely  the  area  in  which  the  mind 
lives,  gives  a  boundless  horizon  and  an  im- 
measurable dome  for  our  intellectual  home,  so 
that  we  can  have  the  sense  of  grandeur  for  a  re- 
source and  as  a  rich  undertone  in  the  whole  life. 
And  a  still  higher  value  is  won,  when  the  mind, 
through  the  revelations  of  science,  feels  itself 
surrounded  and  overarched  by  a  more  subtle 
beauty  and  charm  than  the  outward  aspects  of 
nature  supply. 

Sometimes  we  hear  lamentations  of  the  decay 
of  poetic  fascination  from  nature  by  the  banish- 
ment of  all  the  exquisite  fancies  of  elder  igno- 
rance and  the  myths  of  the  classic  theology.  But 
we  are  richer  in  material  of  poetry  to-day  by  rea- 
son of  our  spreading  science  than  any  age  has 
been. 

What  a  palace  of  splendors  our  cold  explorers 
have  been  building  with  trowels  of  mathematics 
and  the  cement  of  law !  What  if  they  have 
worked  like  journeymen  at  their  tasks,  lifting 
the  rough  stones,  item  by  item,  without  a  sense 
of  beauty,  and  putting  in  the  oriel  windows  as 
glaziers,  not  as  artists  ?  Is  it  any  the  less  a 
Cologne  Cathedral  they  are  erecting  ?  And  when 
their  scaffoldings  are  knocked  away,  is  it  not 
beauty  rather  than  masonry  they  have  been  rear- 
ing by  their  toil  ?  Let  any  one  read  Lieutenant 
Maury's  book  on  the  Ocean,  and  ask  if  we  have 


Sight  and  Insight.  163 

lost  material  of  poetic  inspiration  and  expres- 
sion by  the  banishment  of  majestic  Neptune, 
whose  chariot-wheels  scarce  touched  the  glassy 
azure,  and  the  Tritons  with  their  shell-fish  fingers 
and  their  porpoise  fins.  Mr.  Campbell  mourns 
that,  — 

"  When  Science  from  Creation's  face 

Enchantment's  veil  withdraws, 
Such  lovely  visions  yield  their  place 
To  cold  material  laws." 

He  said  this  of  the  rainbow,  but  it  is  Science  that 
detects  the  enchantment  in  the  light.  Each  pulse 
of  it  beats  nearly  two  hundred  thousand  miles  a 
second  without  jostling  the  air.  It  may  blow 
never  so  hard,  or  it  may  be  dead  calm,  and  those 
vibrations  fall  equally  serene.  The  most  spiritual 
element  in  nature  is  the  most  stable.  Eleven 
millions  of  miles  a  minute  from  the  sun  without 
any  visible  or  conceivable  chords  of  communica- 
tion, every  inch  of  the  air  a  conductor,  every  ray  of 
it  stranded  of  seven  hues,  and  an  eighth  element 
besides  which  slips  through  the  prism  and  is  the 
soul  of  all,  never  resting  and  never  wasting  in  its 
journey  of  ages,  —  it  rather  dims  the  marvel  and 
the  poetry  of  the  Atlantic  cable. 

And  yet  the  relations  of  light  and  our  eye  are 
more  astonishing  still.  To  get  the  sensation  of 
redness,  our  eyes  are  affected  four  hundred  and 
eighty-two  millions  of  millions  of  times  in  a  sec- 
ond ;  of  yellowness,  five  hundred  and  forty-two 
millions  of  millions  j  and  of  violet,  seven  hundred 


164  Sight  and  Insight. 

i 

and  seven  millions  of  millions  of  times.  I  quote 
from  the  careful  Sir  John  Herschel,  who  says  that 
"  they  are  conclusions  to  which  any  one  may  most 
certainly  arrive  who  will  only  be  at  the  trouble  of 
examining  the  chain  of  reasoning  by  which  they 
have  been  obtained."  So  that  the  seven-hued 
rainbow,  whose  firm  and  subtle  flame  is  reared 
out  of  drops  of  water  that  are  ever  shifting,  is  the 
result  of  a  play  upon  the  keys  of  the  human  eye 
so  astonishing  that,  though  figures  may  state  it, 
the  strongest  mind  staggers  like  an  infant  under 
the  awful  revelation. 

Think,  too,  of  the  marvels  of  vegetable  growth  : 
how  the  oak  draws  almost  nothing  from  the  soil, 
but  is  instituted  air  and  rain  ;  how  the  chains  of 
mountains,  as  has  recently  been  said,  are  made  of 
gases  and  rolling  wind;  how  Nature,  out  of  one 
element  of  moisture,  pours  through  the  veins  of 
trees  the  juices  of  the  peach,  the  pear,  the  apple, 
and  the  plum,  and  conjures  all  the  various  nectar 
of  all  climes  out  of  dew,  so  that  the  mystery  of 
the  miracle  of  Cana  is  repeated  within  the  soft 
vesture  of  the  grape  that  distils  wine,  not,  as  in 
some  Boston  cellars,  out  of  vitriol  and  logwood, 
but  out  of  vapor  and  sunlight  at  the  bidding  of 
God. 

"  Tmth  is  fair ;  should  we  forego  it  ? 

Can  we  sigh  right  for  a  wrong  ? 
God  himself  is  the  best  poet, 
And  the  real  is  his  song." 

Perhaps  the  most  fascinating  picture  which  the 
Greek  mythology  has  transmitted  to  us  is  that  of 


Sight  and  Insight.  165 

delicate  and  resplendant  Aphrodite,  goddess  of 
beauty,  who  rose  out  of  the  sea,  as  the  fable  ran, 
and  hastened,  with  rosy  feet,  to  the  land,  where 
grass  and  flowers  spring  up  beneath  her  tread. 
Yet  what  is  this  exquisite  picture,  as  a  stimulant 
of  the  poetic  sense,  in  comparison  with  the  fulfil- 
ment of  its  dim  suggestion  in  modern  discoveries  ? 
What  is  it  in  contrast  with  the  real  Aphrodite  of 
science  whose  substance  is  the  misty  exhalation 
of  the  ocean,  and  who  wears  the  rainbow  for  a 
scarf? 

All  the  verdure  of  nature  is  born  from  the  foam 
of  the  sea.  If  every  spring-time  it  should  rise 
miraculously  from  the  salt  deeps, — if  all  trees,  all 
grains,  all  flowers,  should  spring  at  once  from  the 
brine  and  be  wafted  by  magic  to  adorn  the  land,  — 
it  would  be  only  a  sensuous  exhibition  of  the  fact 
which  poetic  insight  discovers  when  it  takes  from 
science  the  truth  that  the  sunbeams  coax  fresh 
vapor  from  the  ocean's  treasury ;  how  the  winds 
sweep  them  over  the  land,  and  how,  dropping  in 
dew  and  pouring  in  showers,  they  do  robe  the 
rocks  with  verdure  interwoven  with  flowers,  spread 
the  face  of  nature  with  nodding  loveliness,  and  so 
open  to  our  conception  a  purer  Aphrodite  than 
the  ancient  one,  —  the  daughter  of  God,  her  step 
on  every  blossoming  patch  of  our  soil,  and  her 
tunic  brilliant  with  the  representative  flora  of 
the  globe ! 

The  processes  of  nature,  to  the  mind  that  pen- 
etrates to  the  springs  of  truth,  supply  richer  beauty 
to  thought  than  the  visible  bloom  affords. 


1 66  Sight  and  Insight. 

It  may  be  thought  that  all  this  is  very  unpracti- 
cal. But  can  there  be  any  greater  advantage  to 
the  mind  from  any  study  than  to  feel  that  it  is  pa- 
vilioned amid  infinite  poetry  ?  Can  there  be  any- 
thing more  unpractical  than  to  waste  the  opulence 
of  creative  thought,  in  whose  mystic  movement  we 
are  embosomed,  and  which  the  study  of  a  few 
books  would  open? 

If  there  were  some  process  of  mental  cultiva- 
tion that  should  produce  the  magical  result  of 
enlarging  the  house  we  live  in,  —  widening  its 
walls,  lifting  its  stories  higher,  lining  it  with  ex- 
quisite pictures,  thrilling  the  air  of  it  with  music, 
so  that  the  entrance  into  each  room  would  awaken 
peculiar  delight,  —  there  would  be  little  need  of 
arguing  for  the  practicalness  of  it  to  the  most  tor- 
pid miser.  Insight  widens,  enriches,  and  embla- 
zons the  world,  moving  off  the  walls  of  the  senses, 
bringing  out  the  traceries  and  colors  of  the  inces- 
sant imagination  of  the  Creator.  Wherever  the 
body  stays,  the  mind  that  will  vitalize,  through  a 
few  volumes  that  are  level  to  an  average  compre- 
hension by  one  winter's  reading,  the  revelations  of 
modern  science,  can  live  ideally,  as  passing  from 
gallery  to  gallery  of  a  magician's  castle.  Let  a 
fool  own  a  park  and  live  in  it,  and  he  sees  only 
the  shell  of  some  trees  and  the  surface  of  some 
visible  ground.  Let  Humboldt  live  in  a  porter's 
lodge  by  its  gate,  and  he  will  feel  that  he  is  riding 
on  a  rolling  wheel  among  the  stars. 

We  come  to  a  fresh  and  nobler  field  for  the 


Sight  and  Insight.  167 

illustration  of  our  subject  in  turning  from  the 
natural  to  the  social  world,  from  matter  to  man. 
If  we  could  find  a  person  that  has  complete  in- 
sight into  a  man,  who  could  be  said  to  know  a 
single  man  thoroughly,  we  should  find  a  person 
who  comes  as  near  to  knowing  everything  as  a 
finite  creature  can.  All  the  inorganic  forces  of 
laws  are  told  in  the  best  crystal.  All  organic  and 
vegetable  truth  culminates  in  the  best  plant.  All 
wisdom  of  every  degree,  from  every  kingdom, 
rushes  to  a  focus  in  any  single  human  form. 

The  human  being  is  the  head  of  the  animal 
creation.  The  lower  orders  of  life,  rising  epoch 
after  epoch  and  grade  by  grade,  flower  out  in  the 
proportions  of  his  limbs  and  the  implements  of 
his  frame.  Nature  struggled  up  through  a  myriad 
experiments  and  efforts  to  attain  the  perfected  ex- 
cellence of  his  eye,  which  commands  all  nature 
and  catches  the  hints  inwoven  with  the  light  with 
the  subtlest  truths  of  the  universe.  She  spires 
up  through  the  ears  of  the  lower  ranks  of  crea- 
tures to  his  ear,  —  the  highway  of  all  the  music 
of  nature  and  the  exquisite  melodies  and  harmo- 
nies of  genius.  She  ripens  the  skill  that  buds  in 
the  fish's  fin,  the  horse's  hoof,  and  the  lion's  paw, 
in  the  twenty-nine  bones  of  the  human  hand,  so 
supple  in  their  jointings,  and  clothed  with  such 
delicate  sensibility,  that  all  industry  and  cunning 
and  art  are  prophesied  in  their  mechanism. 

In  the  Garden  of  Plants  in  Paris  there  is  a  build- 
ing devoted  to  the  progressive  arrangement  of  the 


1 68  Sight  and  Insight. 

bones  of  all  creatures,  living  and  fossil,  that  have 
bones.  The  mind  runs  up  the  scale  of  vertebrae 
till  it  comes  to  the  human  spine  and  its  appen- 
dages. The  spine  sits  on  the  throne  of  matter.  It 
is  not  without  subtile  scientific  propriety,  therefore, 
that  we  talk  in  the  political  world  now  about  the 
dignity  and  necessity  of  backbone.  Life  climbs 
by  spines.  The  skull  and  jaw  we  find  now  are 
simply  continuations  and  developments  of  the 
back-bone.  A  man  without  backbone  has  no  sci- 
entific right  to  skull  or  jaw.  And  if  some  men 
should  be  obliged  to  take  the  shape  that  corre- 
sponds to  the  dignity  and  stamina  of  their  con- 
victions, we  should  see  them  in  Congress  as 
talking  jelly-Ashes  or  huge  mollusks,  rather  soft 
shelled  than  hard. 

The  physical  man  stands  at  the  apex  of  the 
pyramid  of  matter,  —  all  the  juices,  flavors,  and 
fatness  of  the  world  converging  to  enrich  his 
blood  and  renew  his  flesh,  and  incarnate  them- 
selves in  his  organism  ;  all  the  forces  of  nature^ 
light,  heat,  atmosphere,  electricities,  chemical  af- 
finities, magnetisms,  circulating  around  him  and 
refreshing  his  strength  ;  all  the  subtile  arts  of 
matter  playing  in  the  secretions  and  the  mysteries 
of  his  moving  laboratory  of  life.  Your  spirit  steps 
into  your  body  to  ride  and  wield  the  harnessed 
forces  of  the  world. 

And  now  within  the  material  home  is  the  in- 
tellectual structure  of  a  man,  which  mental  phi- 
losophies for  ages  have  been  trying  to  measure 


Sight  and  Insight.  169 

and  report  in  its  large  and  graceful  proportions  of 
reason,  sentiment,  passion,  will.  And  interpene- 
trating and  towering  over  this  is  the  beauty  that 
belongs  to  the  human  being ;  not  the  mere  phys- 
ical beauty  which  hides  and  yet  shines  in  the 
fashioning  of  the  limbs,  and  which  glows  in  the 
glorious  marble  of  the  Apollo,  but  the  splendor 
of  intellectual  strength  that  showers  from  the  eye, 
the  calm  that  sleeps  mysteriously  upon  a  brow, 
the  majesty  that  enthrones  itself  over  an  eyebrow, 
and  lowers  from  the  bony  circle  an  inch  or  two 
in  sweep,  built  for  an  eye  like  Webster's,  —  a 
majesty  which,  when  Nature  tries  to  intimate  with 
physical  material,  she  splits  a  notch  in  the  New 
Hampshire  mountains,  and  bars  the  awful  walls 
with  a  bare  precipice  of  granite,  —  a  pride  of 
power  like  that  shed  from  the  chest  of  Goethe,  — 
a  commanding,  all-potent  presence  that  swathed 
the  form  of  Washington. 

And  above  all  these  insignia  of  meaning  and 
mystery  are  the  spiritual  forces  that  live  and  work 
deeper  and  deeper  in  a  human  being,  playing 
even  through  his  flesh  as  visibly  as  chemical  pro- 
cesses leave  their  traces  there.  For,  at  the  same 
moment  that  the  powers  of  the  stomach  are  send- 
ing the  flush  of  physical  health  to  the  cheek,  a  force 
of  Heaven  is  writing  there,  with  delicate  pencil 
more  subtle  than  a  sunbeam,  and  more  enduring 
than  a  graver's  steel,  a  line  of  expression,  telling 
of  reward  for  some  good  deed  or  noble  sacrifice. 
And  while  the  brandy  a  man  takes  immoderately 


170  Sight  and  Insight. 

is  publishing  itself  in  the  hue  of  his  countenance, 
a  brush  from  the  pit  is  reaching  up  to  leave  the 
stain  of  a  passion,  or  the  coarse  turn  of  a  habit 
and  a  sin.  Every  power  of  this  universe  is  at 
work  upon  every  man,  —  all  the  science,  all  the 
beauty,  all  the  forces  of  the  realm  of  intellect,  all 
the  pencils  of  the  regions  of  heaven  and  hell. 
Every  sphere  surrounds  each  human  frame.  Our 
feet  are  in  the  dust,  but  we  rise  through  all  cli- 
mates, zones,  kingdoms,  and  there  is  no  one  of  us 
whose  base  is  not  in  the  world  of  darkness,  and 
the  summit  of  whose  being  does  not  pierce  at 
times  to  the  secret  heavens. 

The  compact  of  his  spirit  and  his  body,  his 
presence  everywhere  in  it  and  invisible,  the  har- 
monies of  his  frame,  the  laws  of  its  health  and  the 
laws  of  its  disease,  the  services  of  its  interdepend- 
ent members,  the  balance  of  voluntary  and  involun- 
tary forces,  the  climbing  grade  of  implements  and 
energies,  — bone,  muscle,  vein,  blood,  and  nerve,  — 
the  equal  need  in  it  of  gross  and  airy  aliment,  the 
control  in  it  of  the  chemical  over  the  mineral  pro- 
cesses, the  vital  over  the  chemical,  the  moral  and 
spiritual  over  the  vital  and  intellectual,  lifting  him 
as  a  series  of  kingdoms,  with  his  feet  in  the  dust 
and  his  soul  in  the  heavens,  —  these  facts  and  rela- 
tions of  a  human  being  tell  you  the  manner  in 
which. God  pervades  the  universe;  tell  you  the 
deepest  laws  of  society,  which  is  built  on  the  pat- 
tern of  the  human  form  ;  tell  you  about  the  unity 
in  the  great  ranks  of  service  in  a  state ;  tell  you  the 


Sight  and  Insight.  171 

methods  of  public  disease  and  the  conditions  of 
health ;  tell  you  the  spirit  that  should  be  supreme 
in  all  government,  collecting  the  finest  forces  of 
the  skies  to  run  invisibly  into  every  limb  and  organ 
of  the  body  politic. 

You  remember  the  old  story  how  Menenius 
Agrippa  quelled  the  insurrection  of  the  Roman 
populace  by  his  allegory  of  the  belly  and  the 
members.  They  knocked  under  at  once  to  that 
ventriloquism.  The  Apostle  Paul  set  forth  the 
propriety  of  different  ranks  of  office  in  the  church, 
and  the  equal  need  of  all,  in  the  argument,  "If  the 
whole  body  were  an  eye  where  were  the  hearing?" 
etc.  He  shows  that  its  life  is  bound  up  into  one 
stream  by  the  assurance,  "  If  one  member  suffer 
all  the  members  suffer  with  it,  and  if  one  member 
rejoice  all  the  members  rejoice  with  it."  This  we 
feel  to  be  not  simply  rhetoric,  but  reasoning  from 
types.  It  was  the  same  kind  of  logic  that  an  old 
fellow  used  against  the  opposition  to  the  protec- 
tion of  manufactures  and  other  branches  of  Ameri- 
can industry,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  wrong  to 
grant  special  privileges.  "  Don't  you  see,"  said 
he,  "  you  can't  fat  your  finger  ?  Try  to  fat  your 
middle  finger,  and  you  have  to  put  flesh  on  your 
ribs  and  arms  to  do  it."  Society  is  yet  a  body 
diseased.  We  could  draw  its  picture  as  a  man 
staggering  under  maladies.  Every  vice  and  dis- 
order in  it  answers  to  some  cough,  cramp,  or 
canker  of  the  human  frame,  —  from  the  fever-and- 
ague  of  our  traffic  to  the  squint  in  our  politics 


172  Sight  and  Insight. 

which  prevents  the  eyes  of  the  government  from 
looking  North.  Whoever  could  bring  a  theory  of 
social  organization  that  would  take  up  and  fill  out 
the  analogies  and  orders  of  the  human  frame,  would 
need  no  other  logic  to  demonstrate  its  truth. 

Shrewd  Rochefoucauld  said  that  "  it  is  easier  to 
know  men  in  general  than  any  man  in  particular." 
Complete  insight  into  a  man  discloses  not  only 
these  grand  and  subtile  relations  that  hold  in  hier- 
oglyphic the  divine  laws  of  society,  but  detects 
the  personal  structure  and  quality  of  character. 

A  physician  can  educate  his  eye  so  as  to  see  in 
the  hue  of  the  skin  the  tone  of  the  system  and 
the  amount  of  a  man's  abuse  of  the  laws  of 
health.  Clairvoyant  mediums  have  been  known 
to  tell  from  a  hair  sent  them  in  a  letter  the  disease 
the  person  is  suffering.  Each  part  of  the  body 
has  the  character  of  the  whole  body  in  it.  There 
is  no  miracle  in  the  most  wonderful  instance  of 
these  somnambulic  readings,  because  the  fact 
of  every  man's  physical  condition  is  in  every  flake 
of  his  skin,  and  a  heightened  power  of  perception 
catches  it  naturally. 

So  some  persons  have  the  faculty  of  insight  into 
character.  They  see  a  man  in  a  moment ;  read 
him,  feel  him,  in  an  instant.  Great  noise  has 
been  made  about  phrenology,  —  whether,  by  labo- 
rious fingering  in  the  valleys  and  over  heights  of 
the  skull,  one  may  concoct  the  character  of  the 
subject.  But  we  ought  to  see  that  a  man  is 
scrawled  all  over  with  "ologies."  Every  nerve, 


Sight  and  Insight.  173 

every  hair,  every  motion,  every  nail,  is  steeped  in 
the  essence  of  the  person,  and  radiates  it.  We  are 
published  not  only  geographically  in  the  skull,  but 
by  the  whole  configuration,  and  by  effluence  back 
of  configuration  and  streaming  through  it.  There 
is  a  tone-science ;  showing  how  character  breathes 
in  voice  ;  there  is  a  tooth  science,  there  is  nose- 
ology,  eye-ology,  as  well  as  phrenology.  Each  limb, 
organ,  act,  is  a  battery  of  the  soul.  Lavater,  the 
great  physiognomist,  said  that  he  could  tell  by  the 
different  ways  in  which  fingers  dropped  money  into 
the  contribution-box  of  the  church  what  their  tem- 
peraments and  controlling  dispositions  were.  I 
suppose  that  the  way  a  man's  fingers  don't  drop 
it  tells  just  as  clearly. 

Zschokke,  a  Swiss  clergyman  and  novelist,  had 
the  singular  power  at  times  of  seeing  the  history 
of  persons  that  came  into  his  presence.  How,  he 
knew  not,  but  facts  in  a  man's  career  would  some- 
times stand  just  as  clearly  before  his  mind  as  the 
outward  man  before  his  eye.  He  was  a  moral 
clairvoyant.  The  veil  dropped  from  his  vision  that 
hides  to  most  of  us  the  substance  of  character. 

All  a  man's  experience  is  funded  in  him.  We 
go  about  printing  off  proof-impressions  of  our- 
selves every  minute  in  the  spiritual  air.  And  the 
finger-power  which  some  natures  have  of  detect- 
ing by  subtle  feeling  the  quality  of  others  —  the 
mesmeric  power  which  feels  from  a  letter  tbe  state 
of  soul  in  which  it  was  written  —  is  perhaps  only 
an  intimation  of  the  kind  of  world  we  are  to  live 


174  Sight  and  Insight. 

in  when  the  body  drops  away,  and  there  can  be 
"  nothing  secret  that  shall  not  be  made  manifest, 
neither  anything  hid  that  shall  not  be  known  and 
come  abroad." 

The  highest  range  of  study  in  which  the  distance 
between  sight  and  insight  is  measured,  and  where 
the  triumphs  of  insight  are  more  vivid,  is  that  of 
history.  No  man  knows  the  science  of  nature 
who  simply  catalogues  all  the  facts  that  are  patent 
to  his  eye  ;  and  so  a  man  may  commit  to  memory 
every  incident  of  mortal  experience,  the  date  of 
every  occurrence,  the  birth  and  death  of  every  great 
man  of  every  kingdom,  yes,  of  every  inhabitant  of 
the  globe,  the  arithmetic  and  fortunes  of  every  bat- 
tle that  has  been  fought,  and  still  not  have  advanced 
an  inch  towards  an  acquaintance  with  the  story 
of  humanity.  It  is  when  he  begins  to  see  the 
ideal  relations  and  harmonies  and  lessons  of  these 
facts  that  insight  into  history  begins. 

Think  what  it  is  to  know  Europe  as  it  exists 
to-day !  There  is  the  gazetteer's  knowledge,  —  so 
many  acres,  so  many  people,  so  many  languages, 
so  many  houses,  offices,  art-rooms,  temples,  ruins. 
There  is  the  politician's  knowledge,  estimating 
the  power,  the  material  forces,  the  passions,  the 
attitudes,  the  purposes,  of  the  states  that  checker 
its  surface.  But  higher  than  these,  and  including 
them,  the  only  real  knowledge  of  Europe  is  that 
of  the  philosopher,  who  knows  how  it  came  to  be 
what  it  is ;  who  knows  the  classic,  barbaric,  and 
Christian  elements  that  have  interplayed  and  over- 


Sight  and  Insight.  175 

shot  each  other  in  the  web  of  its  life ;  what  stocks 
have  intermixed  to  produce  each  people  and  de- 
termine its  character ;  how  the  art  arose  that  gems 
it ;  from  what  deeps  of  sentiment  its  cathedral 
spires  have  risen ;  when  the  creative  seasons  of 
its  literature  have  dawned ;  from  wtiat  boiling 
anarchies  its  now  heavy  and  hoary  despotisms 
were  cast  up  ;  what  cheering  and  disastrous  forces 
are  at  work  in  its  life  to-day ;  and  so  what  ten- 
dencies, according  to  the  infallible  laws  of  public 
growth,  are  pointing  to  and  fashioning  its  future. 

All  this  knowledge  streams  out  of  Europe.  It 
is  a  perpetual  exhalation  from  the  visible  facts  to 
the  mind  that  has  insight,  or  can  feel  the  impal- 
pable. Without  it  a  man  knows  only  the  corpse 
of  the  continent,  not  its  life,  its  soul. 

And  thus  it  is  that  a  man  must  study  the 
registers  of  ancient  time.  Niebuhr,  Bunsen,  Car- 
lyle,  Grote,  have  few  other  sources  of  knowledge 
than  old  Rollin  had.  They  cannot  manufacture 
a  new  fact.  It  is  the  sharper  eye,  the  profounder 
mind,  the  flaming  moral  sense,  which  makes  the 
difference  between  dates  and  facts  as  they  lie 
loose,  and  the  same  particulars  as  they  knit  them- 
selves, upon  their  pages,  into  the  anatomy,  the 
physiology,  the  expression,  and  the  character  of  a 
kingdom  or  an  age. 

The  science  of  history  has  been  making  im- 
mense advances,  of  late,  by  the  disclosure  of  new 
material.  The  grave  has  been  disgorging  some 
of  its  dead  empires  for  our  instruction.  We  have 


176  Sight  and  Insight. 

heard  the  buried  bones  of  old  Nineveh  rattle 
under  their  desolate  mound,  and  have  seen  its 
cracked  and  half- calcined  skeleton  lift  itself,  at 
the  incantation  of  an  English  traveller,  to  glare 
with  blank  eye-sockets  upon  the  changes  of  three 
thousand  years.  But  battered  Sphinx  and  Aztec 
masonry  and  unhearsed  Babylon  have  not  sup- 
plied such  vivid  and  far-reaching  knowledge  of 
the  past  as  the  keen  scrutiny  of  the  wrecks  of 
language  has  disclosed.  Little  things  in  the  frag- 
ments of  literature  and  tradition  tell  great  things, 
as  the  scale  of  Agassiz  conjures  the  spectre  of 
the  fish  that  once  wore  it  in  the  flesh.  Literature 
is  so  steeped  in  the  vitality  of  a  nation  that  it 
sheds  the  composite  aroma  of  the  national  for- 
tunes, —  as  it  has  been  said  by  a  great  critic  that 
out  of  any  one  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  the 
most  imaginative,  the  least  historic,  the  essential 
history  and  civilization  of  England,  up  to  Shake- 
speare's time,  could  be  unravelled.  Languages 
tell  more  than  ruins  and  external  annals.  They 
tell  the  story  of  migrations,  relationships,  col- 
lisions, and  interfusions  of  race.  A  word  or  two 
in  a  vocabulary,  the  structure  and  inflections  of  a 
verb,  report  the  cousinship  of  widely  sundered 
peoples,  —  their  original  nearness  in  space  and 
kin. 

Thus  continually  new  and  more  important  in- 
struction is  opening  to  us  from  the  past.  As  we 
are  carried  further  away  from  past  generations 
and  the  ancient  world,  we  come  closer  to  them 


Sight  and  Insight.  177 

intellectually,  and  penetrate  more  deeply  the  truth 
their  experience  incarnated. 

Many  of  you  recall  the  little  pamphlet,  entitled 
"  The  Stars  and  the  Earth,"  published  a  few  years 
since,  which  contained  some  entertaining  fancies 
founded  on  the  laws  of  light.  If  one  could  be 
present  now  in  some  orb  of  the  firmament  to 
which  the  light  from  our  globe  would  be  a  hun- 
dred years  in  travelling,  he  would,  if  he  could  by 
a  miraculous  vision  gaze  upon  our  earth,  see  what 
was  going  on  here  a  hundred  years  ago.  Let  him 
remove  still  back  in  space  to  a  point  which  light 
needs  more  than  two  thousand  years  to  reach, 
and  its  beams  would  carry  to  him  the  picture  of 
Socrates  and  his  contemporaries  ;  and  the  farther 
back  he  should  be  removed  the  more  ancient 
would  be  the  people  and  the  kingdoms  that  would 
be  given,  fresh  and  living,  to  his  eye. 

The  historic  glass  does  work  this  magic  for  us 
as  we  move  off  from  the  ancient  world  and  time. 
We  have  men  among  us  who  know  Greece  to-day 
better  than  the  average  intellectual  Greeks  did. 
We  can  study  now  each  great  state  of  antiquity 
as  a  whole.  We  can  perceive  the  working  of  law 
in  organizing  the  state  as  one  body  in  time,  and 
study  the  secret,  slow,  and  sublime  play  of  provi- 
dential forces  in  compacting  its  organism,  and 
then  unnerving  its  strength  and  paralyzing  it  for 
evil.  Our  insight  seizes  perspective,  and  detects 
symmetry,  and  puts  each  movement  into  relation 
with  a  persistent  force  or  law. 

8*  L 


1 78  Sight  and  Insight. 

And  the  lesson  which  the  mind  that  has  insight 
sees  inwrought  with  history,  striking  through  the 
story  of  every  nation,  and  making  every  promi- 
nent page  transparent  for  its  rays,  is  that  every 
nation  is  under  the  moral  laws,  veined  by  them 
and  electric  with  them.  The  Infinite  Justice  gazes 
out  of  every  historic  chapter  as  out  of  paragraphs 
of  Exodus  and  Jeremiah.  All  "  Books  of  the 
Kings  "  are  serious  and  sacred. 

Milton  gives  us  the  picture  of  Michael  the 
archangel  showing  to  Father  Adam,  from  a  high 
mountain,  the  flow  of  human  fortunes.  He 
purged  with  euphrasy  and  rue  the  visual  nerve 
which  pierced  even  to  the  inmost  seat  of  mental 
sight,  and  unveiled  to  him  the  procession  of 
empires  and  the  long,  sad  lineage  of  sufferings 
and  wrongs.  The  historic  student  looks  back 
from  such  a  height  and  with  such  a  purged  vision, 
and  he  sees  that  nothing  is  stable  but  justice. 
Empires  shrivel  and  waste  like  ghosts  because 
they  import  too  little  of  the  eternal  substance  to 
be  adjusted  to  the  tremendous  forces  of  Provi- 
dence. Isaiah's  insight  is  gained  at  once  by 
cool-blooded  science  on  that  meditative  height. 
Nations  do  not  die  from  foreign  blows,  or  from 
old  age,  or  from  too  great  weight  of  possessions, 
but  from  their  meagre  organization,  their  failure 
to  distribute  their  classes  by  the  principle  of  fra- 
ternity, their  opposition,  through  ignorance  or 
insolence,  to  that  righteousness  which  is  the 
inmost  truth  of  things.  They  break  the  law  of 


Sight  and  Insight.  1 79 

God,  as  they  suppose,  for  their  convenience  and 
aggrandizement,  and  find  instead  that  it  has 
broken  them. 

Thus  learn,  insight  into  history  is  insight  into 
to-day.  All  great  problems  are  here.  Just  as 
Diomedes  saw  the  gods  in  the  battle,  according 
to  the  Iliad,  when  Pallas  Athene  blew  the  mist 
from  his  eyes,  every  man  who  has  had  clear  in- 
sight into  history  sees  the  antagonist  gods,  the 
powers  divine  and  infernal,  struggling  amid  the 
confusions  and  roar  of  our  national  experience,  as 
clearly  as  in  the  days  of  Ahab  and  Elijah,  Herod 
and  the  Baptist,  Nero  and  Paul.  In  fact,  if  he 
has  not  been  able  to  see  them  thus  pitted  against 
each  other  on  the  prairies  of  Kansas  or  in  the 
literature  of  the  Dred  Scott  decision,  it  is  of  no 
consequence  what  he  sees  in  the  story  of  Ahab 
or  in  his  mummy  New  Testament. 

The  practical  reading  of  this  fact  is  that  states- 
manship is  pre-eminently  the  science  demanding 
insight.  It  is  the  highest  trust,  and  asks  the 
deepest  wisdom.  The  grades  of  statesmanship 
are  always  determined  by  what  the  men  see  work- 
ing in  the  nation.  And  that  only  is  real  states- 
manship which  guides  itself  by  what  history 
shows  to  be  the  enduring  omnipotent  forces, 
just  as  that  is  the  only  seamanship  which  guides 
by  the  eternal  lights  and  the  tested  charts. 

A  demagogue  would  guide  a  state,  not  by  in- 
sight or  sight  either.  He  sails  in  a  fog  and  steers 
by  the  ear.  An  executive  politician,  the  man 


i8o  Sight  and  Insight. 

whom  we  delight  to  call  practical,  shapes  his 
course  by  a  conception,  perhaps,  of  the  com- 
mercial and  material  greatness  of  his  country. 
He  counts  himself  one  of  the  managers  of  a  great 
business  firm  ;  and  his  conceptions  of  the  func- 
tions and  duties  of  government  would  be  filled 
out  by  putting  over  the  National  Capitol  a  huge 
sign  :  "  South  Carolina,  New  England,  Ohio,  & 
Co.,  dealers  in  negroes,  cotton,  hams,  and  hay." 
So  long  as  he  can  keep  the  partners  from  quarrel- 
ling, and  make  the  firm  pay  ten  per  cent  under 
the  parchment  constitution,  he  considers  his  office 
discharged. 

But  the  statesman  knows,  as  clearly  as  he  sees 
the  sun  in  heaven,  that  the  real  constitution  of 
every  kingdom  is  an  unwritten  one.  He  knows 
that,  according  to  forces  that  no  pen  can  create 
and  no  votes  can  bar,  —  forces  that  play  around 
and  bend  and  magnetize  all  others,  forces  of 
character  which  after  a  while  steal  into  the  arith- 
metic of  the  nation's  ledgers,  ooze  up  from  the 
soil  and  affect  the  harvests,  travel  with  the  colo- 
nists that  seek  the  new  land,  distil  through  the 
breath  of  court-rooms,  and  so  rot  or  rivet  the 
invisible  bolts  of  social  union,  —  the  nation  is 
doomed  to  expansion  and  vigor  or  to  barbarism 
and  ruin.  He  knows  how  nations  ought  to  live, 
because  he  sees  how  nations  have  died. 

See  how  the  imperial  Roman  oak  of  history 
died.  Its  religion  perished  first;  its  hardihood 
sunk  into  effeminacy,  so  that  it  had  no  living  con- 


Sight  and  Insight.  181 

nection  with  the  treasury  of  spiritual  forces  in  the 
soil  and  the  air.  And  then  the  sap  in  its  huge 
veins  began  to  dry  ;  the  fibrous  muscles  which 
centuries  had  toughened  shrank;  the  leaves  shriv- 
elled from  juiceless  stems ;  the  bark  softened  ; 
caterpillars  and  worms  and  bugs  from  all  the 
Eastern  sinks  made  their  home  in  it ;  and,  finally, 
a  howling  storm  of  barbarism  set  it  from  the 
Northeast,  amid  which,  in  its  vigorous  days,  the 
forest  monarch  would  have  stood  erect,  with  hardly 
the  loss  of  a  filial  leaf,  but  which  now  whirled 
branches  and  boughs  before  its  gusts  and  left  the 
crippled  trunk,  a  show  of  its  greatness,  to  crumble 
and  rot  into  the  soil  of  time.  Trajan's  Column, 
jthe  battered  arch  of  Constantine  the  Great,  the 
ivied  segment  of  the  Colosseum  walls,  the  crum- 
bling colonnades  of  the  Acropolis,  are  the  letters 
in  cipher  before  a  statesman's  eye,  rising  over  the 
imperial  cemeteries  of  history,  hinting  an  impor- 
tant fact  or  two  as  to  the  constitution  that  knits 
and  governs  a  people  really. 

What  sight  so  frightful,  therefore,  as  to  see  a 
great  nation  with  a  mighty  future,  guided,  in  its 
critical  season,  by  men  who  have  no  social  in- 
sight, no  moral  enthusiasm  warming  their  wisdom, 
no  faith  in  the  superior  permanence  of  moral  over 
commercial  forces,  —  men  who,  it  should  seem, 
must  have  read  history  with  cataracts  over  their 
eyes. 

Goethe  had  a  fancy  that  some  men  are  edu- 
cated into  such  large  proportioned  minds  on  this 


1 82  Sight  and  Insight. 

globe  that  they  become,  when  they  die,  the  spirits 
of  planets,  diffusing  their  energy  through  the  sub- 
stance of  a  world.  This  is  a  good  definition  of 
the  capacities  a  great  public  man  should  have. 
Very  often  the  reverse  is  the  case.  Pygmies  con- 
trive to  perch  themselves  on  Alps.  As  a  shrewd 
farmer  once  said  of  one  of  our  Presidents  :  "  We 
thought  he  was  something  of  a  man  when  we  had 
him  in  our  State  ;  but  come  to  spread  him  out 
over  the  whole  Union,  he  does  average  dreadful 
thin." 

The  position  given  to  some  men  on  this  earth, 
with  regard  to  a  nation,  is  scarcely  less  sublime 
than  if  we  could  see  a  mortal  leap  on  a  star  to 
steer  through  space.  If  an  astronomer  should 
follow  such  a  voyager  with  his  glass,  he  might  ad- 
mire the  energy  with  which  he  should  kindle  furi- 
ous fires  beneath  its  granite  boilers,  whip  it  like  a 
top,  and  make  it  whirl  swifter  and  swifter  on  its 
axis  ;  but  would  he  think  that  it  showed  any 
celestial  statesmanship  to  guide  it  contrary  to  the 
law  of  gravitation  ?  Whoever  should  be  at  the 
helm,  would  he  not  prophesy,  with  some  surety, 
that,  by  the  constitution  of  the  solar  system,  it 
was  whizzing  towards  a  smash-up,  to  be  beached 
on  chaos  ? 

Historical,  political,  and  social  insight  discerns 
the  one  deepest  law  which  rules  under  the  votes 
of  parliaments  and  senates  just  as  surely  as  the 
law  of  gravity  upholds  the  Capitols  they  sit  in  ; 
and  it  bows  to  them  with  a  reverence  that  would 


Sight  and  Insight.  183 

seek  to  twist  the  certainties  of  the  multiplication- 
table  for  private  benefit  as  soon  as  to  doubt  their 
despotism. 

Behind  the  facts  of  nature  which  the  sunlight 
kindles  up  is  the  order  in  which  they  play,  and 
which  the  studious  intellect  explores.  Around  the 
facts,  and  diffused,  also,  through  the  order,  is  the 
beauty  which  tempts  and  feeds  another  eye.  And 
now,  deeper  than  order  and  beauty  together,  play- 
ing through  both  and  using  both,  is  the  spiritual 
meaning,  the  symbolism,  of  the  facts  which  lie 
before  the  senses.  A  finer  insight,  a  more  search- 
ing eye,  is  needed  for  this  sphere,  and  richer 
results  reward  it.  Each  thing  in  nature  is  a  hiero- 
glyphic. It  has  a  structure  which  science  draws,  a 
color  which  taste  appreciates,  a  use  of  which  skill 
avails,  and  it  stands  for  something,  it  holds  and 
hides  a  message  which  spiritual  insight  catches. 
The  world  was  not  whittled  into  Shape.  God 
could  not  create  anything  other  than  vitally,  so 
that  it  should  be  magnetized  with  all  his  attri- 
butes and  exhale  them  to  faculties  fine  enough  to 
receive  the  effluence. 

This  is  the  reason  every  great  writer  utters  his 
thought  in  imagery.  The  world  is  his  dictionary. 
The  processes  of  life  all  around  him  hurry  to  his 
pen,  eager  to  be  the  rhetoric  of  his  ideas.  No 
sooner  is  a  new  science  perfected  and  clinched 
to  the  intellect  by  the  calculus,  than  it  dissolves 
into  a  finer  fluid  for  the  inkstand  of  the  poet  and 
the  seer.  It  offers  new  and  glowing  symbols  of 
human  life  and  the  highest  moral  truth. 


184  Sight  and  Insight. 

Set  a  golden  statue  by  Phidias  before  a  child, 
and  it  sees  a  mass  of  brilliant  color ;  before  an 
avaricious  eye,  and  it  gloats  over  the  stately  embod- 
iment of  so  much  cash  ;  before  a  devotee  of  anat- 
omy, and  he  finds  a  revelation  of  so  much  bodily 
proportion  ;  before  a  mineralogist,  and  he  per- 
ceives so  much  chemical  and  mineral  truth ;  before 
an  artist,  and  he  gazes  upon  so  much  skill  and 
beauty;  before  a  man  of  moral  insight,  and  he 
discerns  the  grandeur  of  a  God  transfusing  its  sub- 
stance, pouring  over  the  brightness  of  its  limbs, 
controlling  its  symmetry,  breathing  in  undrainable 
suggestiveness  from  its  face.  Each  eye  lights 
upon  a  truth,  but  the  last  one  pierces  to  the  finest, 
highest,  all-penetrating,  all-dominating  truth.  So 
it  is  in  the  world.  The  senses  simply  stare  at 
nature ;  the  mind  looks,  and  finds  law ;  the  taste 
combines,  and  enjoys  art ;  the  soul  reads,  and 
gains  the  permeating  wisdom. 

Take  a  spear  of  growing  wheat,  and,  after  its 
chemical  secrets  and  its  beauty  of  structure  are 
detected  and  appreciated,  it  turns  to  language,  as 
when  a  religious  writer  illustrates  humility  by  it 
in  the  figure.  The  mind  that  knows  most  is  the 
most  reverent,  just  as  the  ear  of  grain  that  is  full- 
est bends  over  beneath  the  sky.  A  wisp  of  wheat 
has  been  carried  to  the  noblest  mill  when  a  Chris- 
tian poet  extracts  that  flour  from  its  grains.  So 
the  whole  universe  turns  into  a  dictionary  for  the 
uses  of  the  inseeing  mind. 

Christianity  uses  most  freely  the   broad  rich 


Sight  and  Insight.  185 

facts  of  nature,  in  parables  and  allegories,  to 
state  its  doctrines,  putting  its  light  within  the 
ordinary  facts  that  we  see,  and  making  them  glow 
as  transparencies  of  celestial  truth. 

The  universe  was  created  so  as  to  serve  the 
prophet's  purposes,  and  be  a  sermon.  All  the 
dark  facts  in  it  dissolve  into  ink  to  write  the  folly 
and  doom  of  evil ;  all  the  winning  and  cheering 
facts  in  it  melt  into  light  to  commend  and  eulogize 
what  is  good.  When  you  have  demonstrated  the 
law  of  gravitation  and  have  hidden  its  force  in 
the  dark  substance  of  the  sun,  and  shown  it 
grasping  thence  the  farthest  planet  that  ploughs 
the  chilly  ether  and  balancing  a  family  of  worlds, 
have  you  not  also  shown  how  the  justice  of  the 
Infinite  Mind  impalpably  grapples  all  the  spirits 
of  the  globe,  however  far  they  wander  from  him, 
and  holds  nations,  as  well  as  men,  by  the  fine, 
awful  tendrils  of  his  law.  And  when  you  untwist 
the  rays  that  leap  unstinted  and  forever  from  the 
vesture  of  the  sun,  and  find  in  each  wave  of  them 
light  and  heat  and  all  colors  and  vitality,  and  find 
them  flooding  the  air  of  every  planet  as  easily  as 
they  visit  one,  and  present  to  every  eye,  kind- 
ling all  nature  for  it,  with  no  more  labor  than  in 
doing  it  for  one ;  inflicting  pain  upon  the  dis- 
eased retina  by  the  same  beneficence  that  blesses 
the  well  one,  and  illumining  a  different  world  for 
each  mind  it  visits  according  to  its  culture  or  its 
purity,  —  have  you  not  found  a  finer,  vaster  solar 
astronomy  by  your  analysis  and  research  ?  — found 


1 86  Sight  and  Insight. 

a  pictured  statement  of  the  interblending  of 
.Infinite  Mercy  and  Truth  in  the  rays  that  stream 
continually  in  upon  the  soul's  world,  how  they 
bless  us  and  color  us  according  to  our  faculty  of 
reception,  and  how  they  visit  and  rule  every  heart 
and  will  as  easily  as  they  fall  upon  one  ? 

In  every  department  of  nature  "like  a  finer 
light  in  light,"  the  last  word  of  any  discovery, 
the  soul  of  the  fact,  is  moral. 

The  earth 

"  Is  but  the  shadow  of  heaven  and  things  therein 
Each  to  the  other  like,  more  than  on  earth  is  thought." 

There  may  be  a  meadow  farm  among  the  moun- 
tains. The  heir  to  it  gets  a  cabbage  and  a  corn- 
crop  from  it,  suspecting  no  other  latent  fertility 
and  produce.  A  man  of  science  buys  it,  gets  no 
less  cabbages  and  hay,  but  reaps  a  geology-crop 
as  well.  An  artist  buys  it,  and  lo !  a  harvest  of 
beauty  and  delight,  budding  even  when  the  grain 
is  garnered,  dropping  sweet  into  his  eyes  even 
from  arctic  dawns  and  blazing  snows.  A  man 
of  deepest  insight  lives  on  it,  and  the  laws  of  his 
farm  open  to  him  the  prudence  and  prodigality  of 
Providence.  In  the  way  the  grain  grows,  the 
enemies  it  has,  the  friendships  of  all  good  forces 
to  its  advance,  in  the  chemistry  of  his  farming,  in 
the  peace  that  sleeps  on  the  hills,  in  the  gathering 
and  retreat  of  storms,  in  the  soft  approach  of 
spring,  and  the  melancholy  death  he  reads  lessons 
that  become  inmost  wisdom.  He  has  a  faculty 
that  is  the  sickle  of  more  subtle  crop-sheaves  of 
spiritual  truth. 


Sight  and  Insight.  187 

The  different  ways  in  which  different  tempera- 
ments and  states  of  heart  regard  nature  is  very 
simply  and  sweetly  stated  in  a  little  German  poem 
of  which  I  saw  a  translation  yesterday.  Two 
men  had  gone  up  from  the  city  to  visit  the  sum- 
mit of  one  of  the  Alps.  They  returned,  and  their 
kindred  pressed  about  them  to  know  what  visions 
they  had  enjoyed. 

"  'T  was  a  buzz  of  questions  on  every  side. 
'  And  what  have  you  seen  ?     Do  tell ! '  they  cried. 

"  The  one  with  yawning  made  reply, 
'  What  have  we  seen  ?    Not  much  have  I ! 
Trees,  mountains,  meadows,  groves,  and  streams, 
Blue  sky,  and  clouds,  and  sunny  gleams.' 

"  The  other,  smiling,  said  the  same  ; 
But  with  face  transfigured,  and  eye  of  flame  : 
'  Trees,  meadows,  mountains,  groves,  and  streams, 
Blue  sky,  and  clouds,  and  sunny  gleams.' " 

Just  as  there  are  spelling-classes  for  the  young- 
est scholars  in  our  schools,  in  which  the  separate 
letters  are  the  chief  things  they  see,  where  the 
great  problem  is  to  combine  them  into  words, 
and  where  the  mental  organs  are  not  capable  of 
configuring  words  into  propositions,  —  so  very 
few  of  us  on  the  planet  ever  get  able  to  handle 
the  letters  of  nature  easily,  ever  get  beyond  the 
power  of  spelling  them  into  single  words.  Some 
are  able  to  read  off  the  aspects  of  creation  into 
science.  They  can  put  the  stars  together  into 
paragraphs  that  state  laws  and  harmonies  and 
grandeurs.  Some  go  farther,  and  rhyme  the 
mighty  vocabulary  of  science  into  beauty;  but 


1 88  Sight  and  Insight. 

few  get  such  command  of  the  language  that  they 
see  and  rejoice  in  the  highest,  glorious  truth 
which  the  volume  holds. 

"  What !  "  says  friend  Purblind  Horneye,  "  do  I 
not  see  all  there  is  around  me  ?  Are  not  my  senses 
as  good  as  yours  ?  What  stuff  to  talk  of  more 
realities  right  about  me  than  the  sunshine  and 
fields  and  streets  and  my  office,  my  ledgers,  my 
bank-books,  my  horses,  and  my  house!"  "But  how- 
is  it,  Brother  Purblind,  about  studying  the  Iliad  ? 
If  you  know  all  the  Greek  letters  on  all  the  pages, 
do  you  master  it?  Are  not  the  words  to  be* 
looked  out?  Is  not  their  sense  to  be  detected? 
Are  not  the  style  and  rhythm  to  be  appreciated  and 
enjoyed?  —  the  characters  delineated  there  to  be 
known  and  discriminated?  — the  connections  and 
unities  and  poetic  and  moral  laws  to  be  felt  and 
comprehended  ?  After  your  senses  have  seen  all 
that  there  is  to  be  seen,  have  you  done  anything 
more  than  reach  the  threshold  of  what  there  is 
to  see  ?  What  now,  O  materialistic  Brother  Horn- 
eye,  if  the  universe,  right  about  thee,  is  a  sort 
of  Iliad  .of  the  Infinite  Mind?  What  if  each 
fact  in  it,  which  thy  superficial  sense  beholds,  is 
a  letter  of  a  Divine  word  or  an  adjective  of  a 
mystic  verse  ?  And  what  if  thy  flippant  estimate 
of  the  meaning  of  nature  is  the  child's  slow 
and  stuttering  spelling-out  of  Homer's  syllables, 
while  the  saint's  vision  of  a  life  and  glory  all 
around  is  the  manly  reading  of  the  mighty  poem 
of  the  world?'' 


Sight  and  Insight.  189 

Insight,  therefore,  opens  the  intellectual  world 
of  law  and  harmony  beneath  the  world  of  physi- 
cal shows ;  within  that,  the  world  of  beauty ; 
within  that  again,  the  realm  of  spiritual  language. 
In  the  human  world  it  shows,  deep  behind  deep, 
law  working  in  society,  controlling  politics  and 
shaping  the  destiny  of  nations;  while,  in  the 
individual  sphere,  it  unveils  man  as  the  epitome 
of  the  universe,  clad  continually  in  the  electric 
vesture  of  his  character. 

Every  man,  as  every  animal,  has  sight;  but 
just  according  to  the  scale  of  his  insight  is  the 
world  he  lives  in  a  deep  one,  an  awful  one,  a 
mystic  and  glorious  world.  We  see  what  is,  only 
as  we  see  into  what  appears. 

Out  of  three  roots  grows  the  great  tree  of  nature, 
—  truth,  beauty,  good.  The  man  of  science  fol- 
lows up  its  mighty  stem,  measures  it,  and  sees  its 
branches  in  the  silver-leaved  boughs  of  the  firma- 
ment. The  poet  delights  in  the  symmetry  of  its 
strength,  the  grace  of  its  arches,  the  flush  of  its 
fruit.  Only  to  the  man  with  finer  eye  than  both 
is  the  secret  glory  of  it  unveiled  ;  for  his  vision 
discerns  how  it  is  fed  and  in  what  air  it  thrives. 
To  him  it  is  only  an  expansion  of  the  burning 
bush  on  Horeb,  seen  by  the  solemn  prophet, 
glowing  continually  with  the  presence  of  Infinite 
Law  and  Love,  yet  standing  forever  unconsumed. 


V. 

HILDEBEAND, 

THE  career  of  the  man  who  will  engage  our 
attention  admits  us  to  the  heart  of  the 
eleventh  century ;  for  his  influence  was  felt  pow- 
erfully in  Europe  from  the  year  1040  to  1085. 
The  proper  background,  therefore,  for  a  knowledge 
of  his  life  is  a  conception  of  the  state  of  civiliza- 
tion in  the  early  part  of  the  eleventh  century,  and 
the  relations  of  that  period  in  the  Middle  Ages  to 
the  centuries  before.  The  "  Dark  Ages,"  as  we  call 
them,  commenced  with  the  sixth  century,  when 
Europe  was  completely  disorganized  by  the  settle- 
ment of  the  barbarians  over  the  domain  of  the 
Roman  Empire.  There  were  more  than  four 
hundred  years  of  night.  The  darkness  was  deep- 
est at  the  close  of  the  tenth  century,  after  the 
empire  of  Charlemagne  had  dissolved.  Indeed, 
humanity  seemed  then  in  a  hopeless  condition. 
A  writer  of  the  Middle  Ages  describes  that  time 
as  an  age  that  ought  to  be  called  "  iron,"  from  its 
fierceness,  and  "  leaden,"  for  its  gross  wickedness. 
To  understand  the  condition  of  Europe,  as  the 
year  1000  of  our  era  dawned  upon  it,  you  must 


Hildebrand.  191 

form  a  picture  of  society  destitute  of  every  fea- 
ture, and  seemingly  of  every  force,  that  belongs 
to  what  we  consider  civilization,  —  that  can  be 
thought  to  make  life  a  privilege,  or  even  tolerable. 
There  was  no  such  thing  as  education,  for  there 
was  no  literature,  no  press,  no  books.  There  was 
no  science  even  for  the  highest  classes.  For 
many  centuries  it  had  been  rare  for  a  layman  of 
whatever  rank  to  know  how  to  sign  his  name.  It 
was  a  striking  exception  when  an  emperor  could 
read.  The  Latin  language,  which  held  all  the 
treasures  of  learning,  had  died  out  of  common  use. 
The  ravages  of  pirates  during  the  previous  cen- 
tury had  destroyed  many  of  the  libraries  of  the 
church.  All  books  were  written  then,  on  parch- 
ments, and  they  were  so  costly  that  only  the  most 
princely  fortunes  could  purchase  them.  And 
most  of  therr^  contained  nothing  more  valuable 
than  legends  of  saints,  or  homilies,  or  works  of 
Jerome  or  Augustine,  perhaps  written  over  the 
noblest  treatises  of  Cicero  or  Plato.  We  read 
that  a  certain  princess  in  the  tenth  century,  the 
Countess  of  Anjou,  gave  two  hundred  sheep,  a 
load  of  wheat,  a  load  of  rye,  and  a  load  of  millet, 
with  several  skins  of  costly  fur,  for  a  copy  of  the 
sermons  of  a  German  monk. 

Nothing  that  we  generally  associate  with  the 
Middle  Ages  as  the  glory  of  that  period  had  ap- 
peared then  in  Europe.  There  were  no  grand 
cathedrals,  for  ^Gothic  architecture  had  not  yet 
germinated.  There  was  no  scholastic  philosophy, 


192  Hildebrand. 

for  Abelard  was  yet  a  hundred  years  in  futurity. 
There  was  no  painting,  no  poetry,  and  no  promise 
of  the  Crusades.  There  were  no  methods  of  quick 
travel ;  few  good  roads  from  state  to  state,  and 
such  as  there  were  infested  by  robbers  ;  of  course, 
therefore,  there  could  be  no  great  commerce ;  in 
fact,  there  was  scarcely  any  trade.  What  we  un- 
derstand by  government  had  no  existence.  Feu- 
dal fortresses  were  rising  as  the  prominent  features 
in  every  landscape,  where  nobles,  who  could  not 
spell  their  names  and  did  not  know  a  letter  of  the 
alphabet,  revelled  in  a  brutal  power,  and  looked 
out  over  the  dependent  serfs  in  their  miserable 
huts  ;  and  these  barons  were  somehow  aggregated 
into  what  was  called  a  kingdom,  or  an  empire. 
But  there  was  no  country  then  that  was  organized 
socially,  even  so  well  as  any  district  of  Russia  is 
to-day  ;  and  there  is  no  mechanic's  family  in  this 
city  that  is  not  far  more  richly  provided  with  what 
we  all  esteem  the  comforts  of  life  than  the  average 
noblemen  of  Europe  and  their  households  were  at 
the  close  of  the  tenth  century.  Europe,  in  the 
earlier  portions  of  the  Dark  Ages,  was  morally,  to 
use  a  geological  figure,  in  the  Silurian  Epoch,  — 
everything  insular  and  irregular,  — chaotic  patches 
of  the  future  continent  swelling  out  of  the  sea  of 
barbarous  passion,  bearing  only  the  lowest  types 
of  life. 

In  the  Middle  Ages  it  had  changed  into  the  ter- 
tiary period,  showing  larger  organizations,  enriched 
with  higher  forms,  and  plainly  promising  the  states, 


Hildebran<t\J  »  l 

/  /:^  '' 

the  culture  and  the  civilisation  <£f modern  Europe. 

The  eleventh  century  saw  the  transition  to  thfs 
latter  epoch.  And  yet  when  it  dawned  '  there 
seemed  to  be  no  symptoms  of  any  latent  bene'fi-f 
cent  forces  at  work  for  the  race.  There  s 
to  be  no  reason  why  the  wide-spread  superstition 
might  not  be  realized,  —  that  the  year  1000  would 
wind  up  human  affairs  on  the  planet,  introduce 
the  day  of  judgment,  and  inaugurate  the  mil- 
lennium by  vindictive  and  cleansing  fire.  The 
church,  from  which  the  only  possible  help,  it 
should  seem,  could  spring,  appeared  more  deeply 
tainted  than  society  itself. 

We  must  not  forget  that  both  the  doctrines  and 
polity  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  were  of  slow 
growth.  With  the  very  commencement  of  the  Dark 
Ages,  we  find  the  germ  of  a  pretension  sprouting 
in  Rome,  which  found  congenial  soil  for  its  roots 
in  the  decaying  ancient  civilization,  and  the  pre- 
cise nutriment  it  needed  in  the  heavy  air  of  bar- 
barism. Century  by  century,  while  society  and 
states  dissolved,  it  stretched  underground  its 
fibres,  and  strengthened  its  stalk,  and  shot  out 
leaf  after  leaf  of  doctrine,  discipline,  and  ritual,  — 
putting  forth  now  its  canon  of  the  mass,  and  in 
another  season  its  sanction  for  the  worship  of  the 
Virgin  and  of  images  ;  budding  next  with  its 
forged  decretals  and  claim  of  the  title  of  "  sover- 
eign pontiff"  for  its  bishop ;  then  with  the  doc- 
trine of  transubstantiation,  and  soon  with  its  law 
for  the  canonization  of  saints  and  the  system  of 
9  M 


IQ4  Hildebrand. 

auricular  confession  ;  letting  no  century  slip  by 
without  some  large  leafy  sign  of  its  slow  and 
secret  energy,  till  we  shall  see  it,  when  the  Dark 
Ages  culminate,  like  a  huge  night-blooming  cereus 
ripen  with  its  "  consummate  flower,"  —  the  preten- 
sion to  universal  authority  over  conscience  and  to 
supremacy  over  kings. 

It  was  in  the  middle  of  the  eleventh  century 
that  a  vigorous  attempt  was  made  to  purify  the 
ecclesiastical  spirit  and  to  complete  and  confirm 
the  ecclesiastical  system  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  That  century,  remarkable  for  so  many 
signs  promising  a  greater  future  for  the  world, 
streaked  on  its  horizon  with  the  gray  pulsations 
of  a  dawn,  is  chiefly  distinguished  by  the  move- 
ment within  the  church.  The  introduction  of  cot- 
ton paper  made  from  rags,  which  it  inaugurated; 
the  commencement  of  the  Gothic  style  of  archi- 
tecture, which  it  witnessed  ;  the  Norman  conquest 
of  England,  changing  the  destiny  of  that  island, 
which  belongs  to  its  annals  ;  the  invention  of  the 
musical  scale,  which  is  one  of  its  trophies  ;  the 
birth  of  the  scholastic  philosophy,  which  dignifies 
its  records ;  the  building  in  England  of  Westmin- 
ster Hall,  which  is  one  of  its  monuments,  —  none 
of  these,  nor  even  the  cheers  of  the  Crusaders  un- 
der Godfrey  of  Bouillon,  pouring  through  the  bat- 
tered walls  of  Jerusalem  in  the  year  1099,  which 
is  its  last  and  jubilant  memorial,  presents  so  strik- 
ing a  claim  upon  our  notice  and  our  study  as  the 
efforts  made  for  the  cleansing  of  the  morals,  and 


Hildebrand.  195 

the  widening  of  the  power,  of  the  Catholic  Church 
through  the  genius  of  Hildebrand. 

Hildebrand  was  born  about  the  year  1013,  in  a 
Tuscan  village  in  Italy,  and  was  the  son  of  a  car- 
penter. He  was  educated  in  Rome,  in  one  of 
its  forty  monasteries,  —  in  an  institution  of  which 
his  uncle  was  abbot  Faithful  in  the  stern  disci- 
pline of  the  cloisters,  he  zealously  sought  by  all 
its  helps  to  chastise  and  subdue  his  passions  ; 
and  he  felt  his  own  pride  in  a  monastic  purity 
stimulated  and  justified  by  what  he  saw  of  the 
disorders  and  corruptions  of  Rome  and  even 
of  the  Church  of  Rome.  Entering  manhood, 
he  betook  himself  to  the  monastery  of  Cluny, 
in  France,  celebrated  then  as  the  severest  of 
all  the  ascetic  schools.  There  he  labored  dili- 
gently for  some  years  in  the  double  work  of  per- 
fecting his  conquest  over  the  flesh  and  of  master- 
ing the  knowledge  that  was  possible  in  that  age. 
He  was  soon  distinguished  among  the  brethren 
for  the  severity  of  his  mortification  and  the  breadth 
of  his  learning,  while  for  the  power  of  his  preach- 
ing he  stood  unrivalled,  it  was  said,  among  the 
orators  of  the  church.  He  studied  and  prayed  to 
the  Virgin, — he  flogged  himself  and  starved  him- 
self, till  he  drove  the  passions  which  nature  had 
lodged  in  his  blood  into  the  arteries  of  his  mind. 
His  frame  was  diminutive,  but  his  person  seemed 
of  intellect  all  compact.  He  moved  among  his 
fellow-monks,  who  cared  chiefly  for  shelter  from 
the  ferocious  world  without  and  for  personal  purity, 


Hildebrand. 


electric  with  the  majesty  of  great  ideas,  too  broad 
to  be  held  within  the  walls  of  the  abbot's  rule. 

His  enemies  in  later  years  affirmed  that  he  was 
a  sorcerer,  and  had  perfected  himself  in  the  un- 
holy arts  through  which  a  mortal  has  commerce 
with  Beelzebub.  The  foundation  of  this  charge 
was,  possibly,  some  interest  by  Hildebrand  in  nat- 
ural science,  and  a  curiosity  in  a  mind  so  strong 
to  track,  by  such  experiments  as  could  be  made 
in  that  rude  age,  some  of  the  laws  of  nature.  But 
he  was  charged  with  owning  a  book  of  divination, 
which  would  conjure  the  most  frightful  demons 
for  his  service,  —  and  it  was  generally  believed 
that  he  always  possessed  the  power  of  shaking 
his  sleeves,  and  sprinkling  sparks  of  fire  from 
them  to  awe  people  with  the  signs  of  his  superior 
sanctity.  We  shall  see  what  sparks  he  shook  from 
his  cowl,  when  the  time  came  for  the  full  play  of 
the  ideas  with  which  he  had  stored  himself  in  his 
monastic  retreat.  But  the  power  of  his  genius 
was  most  manifest  in  his  terrible  eye,  which,  it  is 
said,  no  enemy  of  Hildebrand,  or  traitor  to  the 
church,  could  feel  upon  him  without  quailing  and 
submitting.  Those  who  conversed  with  him  said 
that  they  felt  that  his  eye  read  their  secret 
thoughts. 

Among  his  brother-monks  in  Cluny,  he  medi- 
tated upon  the  future  of  the  church  he  had  sworn 
to  serve.  He  believed  that  it  was  the  represent- 
ative of  Christ's  authority  upon  the  earth,  and  its 
condition,  as  it  lay  beneath  his  gaze,  appalled 


Hildebrand.  197 

him.  The  ecclesiastical  world  was  more  corrupt, 
if  possible,  in  the  first  half  of  the  eleventh  century, 
than  the  civil  world.  The  clergy  were  mostly 
illiterate.  In  the  year  1000  there  was  scarcely  a 
single  person  to  be  found  in  Rome  who  knew  the 
first  elements  of  letters.  The  great  majority  of 
the  priests  in  Italy  were  habitual  drunkards.  A 
Catholic  writer  himself  confesses  that  their  func- 
tion in  those  years  "  had  contracted  to  the  chant- 
ing of  psalms  which  they  could  not  understand, 
and  to  the  mechanical  performance  of  outward 
ceremonies."  An  Italian  bishop  complains  that 
he  could  not  prevail  upon  his  clergy  even  to  learn 
the  creeds,  and  that  even  his  own  flock  were  so 
degraded  as  to  be  unable  to  conceive  how  God 
could  exist  without  a  head.  And  one  of  Hilde- 
brand's  own  friends,  Peter  Damiani,  published  a 
book,  showing  up  the  awful  depravity  of  the 
priesthood,  of  which  the  title  was  "  Gomorrhiana." 
The  records  of  the  church  during  the  hundred 
years  before  his  time  were  under  Hildebrand's  eye 
in  his  monastery,  and  they  offered  a  dreary  com- 
mentary on  the  lordly  high-church  principles  he 
had  espoused  and  matured.  He  believed  that  no 
one  had  the  right  to  hold  an  office  in  the  ecclesi- 
astical economy  except  by  the  call  and  consider- 
ation of  its  highest  ministers ;  and  he  saw  how, 
for  generations,  lords  of  the  castle  had  bee.n 
giving  away  benefices  of  the  church  to  their  re- 
lations, or  selling  them  to  the  highest  bidders. 
He  read  how  a  child  five  years  old  had  been  made 


198  Hildebrand. 

an  archbishop,  and  how  abbots  were  accounted 
worthy,  who  did  nothing  worse  than  feast  and 
hunt  to  fill  out  their  time.  He  believed  that  the 
incumbent  of  the  papacy  was  really  supreme  over 
kings  ;  and  he  saw  that,  not  for  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years,  had  any  proud  claim  of  spiritual 
autocracy  been  made  in  Rome.  Nay,  he  read 
the  long  and  desolate  story  how  the  strength  of 
the  church  had  been  wasted  in  external  and  civil 
quarrels,  as  well  as  drained  by  inward  vice.  Ger- 
man emperors  had  set  up  popes  to  serve  their 
ends,  and  Italian  counts,  or  the  Roman  rabble, 
had  pulled  them  down  again.  Popes  had  been 
exiled,  as  Germany  or  Italy  conquered  in  the  con- 
tinual and  vacillating  strife.  Popes  had  been 
strangled  in  Roman  dungeons.  Popes  had  been 
starved.  Laymen  had  openly  bought  the  awful 
office  from  brigands.  Popes  had  stolen  the  treas- 
ures of  St.  Peter,  and  run  off  to  Constantinople. 
Popes  had  ruled  so  outrageously  that  their  bodies 
were  seized  after  death  by  an  infuriated  populace, 
dragged  through  the  streets,  and  transfixed  with 
lances. "  More  than  twenty  in  a  century  had  illus- 
trated thus  the  anthology  of  crime,  misery,  and 
degradation;  and  at  last,  in  Hildebrand's  own 
time,  while  he  was  studying  those  annals  in 
Cluny,  a  boy  pope  twelve  years  old  was  mas- 
ter of  the  spiritual  sceptre,  and  was  beginning 
to  lead  a  life  so  shameful,  foul,  and  execrable,  that 
a  subsequent  pope  has  said  he  "shuddered  to 
describe  it." 


Hildebrand.  199 

But  the  wider  the  darkness  and  the  more  fright- 
ful the  degradation,  the  more  intensely  does  the 
conviction  possess  the  soul  of  Hildebrand  that 
the  church  must  be  reformed.  The  evils  of  the 
times  must  be  smitten  at  their  root.  The  practice 
of  the  feudal  lofds,  who  were  laymen,  of  selling 
the  offices  of  the  church,  or  of  nominating  to 
them  at  their  own  pleasure,  must  be  prohibited. 
This  evil  was  called  "simony,"  from  Simon 
Magus,  who,  the  book  of  Acts  tells  us,  tried  to  buy 
of  St.  Peter  the  power  of  working  miracles, — 
supposing  that  the  Holy  Ghost  was  a  purchasable 
commodity. 

And  second,  the  marriage  of  the  clergy  must 
be  annulled,  and  their  wives  instantly  put  away. 
The  laws  of  the  church  before  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury had  decreed  that  the  clergy  must  be  unmarried 
men.  But  they  wefe  not  heeded.  Throughout 
Europe,  at  the  commencement  of  the  eleventh 
century,  the  priests  who  had  not  wives  and  fam- 
ilies were  the  exceptions.  To  strike  with  energy 
at  two  such  customs,  interwoven  so  variously  and 
so  minutely  with  the  passions  of  the  world,  must 
task  the  stoutest  statesmanship,  and  must  wrench 
the  framework  of  the  whole  Catholic  organiza- 
tion. 

But  how  shall  Hildebrand  be  able  to  attempt 
it  ?  In  the  year  1048,  thirty-five  years  old,  he  is 
still  a  monk  in  Cluny.  He  had  been  concerned 
with  one  movement  of  reform  in  Rome,  but  it 
had  fallen  through,  and  he  has  returned  to  be 


20O  Hildebrand. 

prior  of  the  monastery.  Filled  with  passion  for 
the  purity  and  power  of  the  church,  what  can  he 
do  with  his  genius,  his  learning,  his  power  as  a 
preacher,  his  terrible  eye  in  his  fleshless  frame, 
against  the  ruthless  villanies  and  the  chronic 
vices  that  are  disgracing  and  devastating  Christen- 
dom ? 

The  opportunity  for  his  service  offered  itself  in 
an  unsuspected  way.  In  the  year  1048  a  new 
pope  had  been  appointed  by  the  German  em- 
peror, who  was  to  take  the  title  of  Leo  the  Ninth, 
—  a  model  of  priestly  purity  and  excellence.  On 
his  way  to  Rome,  travelling  with  great  pomp,  as 
some  of  the  records  run,  he  stopped  for  rest  at 
the  monastery  of  Cluny.  He  met  Hildebrand. 
Their  short  interviews  were  long  enough  for  the 
mind  of  the  monk  to  work  its  spell  over  the  im- 
pressible and  feebler  nature  of  Leo,  and  the  Pope 
invited  him  to  join  his  retinue,  and  live  with  him 
in  Rome.  Hildebrand  refused  to  go,  unless  the 
pope  would  lay  aside  his  pomp,  travel  as  a  pil- 
grim, and  count  himself  unconfirmed  in  his  great 
office  until  the  clergy  and  people  of  Rome  should 
have  assented  to  the  nomination  of  the  emperor. 
To  consider  himself  as  pope  merely  by  virtue 
of  an  imperial  nomination,  Hildebrand  assured 
the  bishop,  was  to  go  to  Rome  as  an  apostate, 
and  not  as  an  apostle.  Leo  yielded  to  his  terms. 
The  whole  retinue  left  Cluny  as  pilgrim-travellers. 
Hildebrand  shut  the  door  of  that  French  mon- 
astery a  second  time  behind  him,  turned  his  face, 


Hildebrand.  201 

in  company  with  that  cowled  and  barefoot  band, 
toward  the  Eternal  City,  and  becomes  the  central 
figure  of  the  passions  and  polity  of  Europe  in  the 
eleventh  century,  —  the  master-spirit  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church.  The  legends 
assure  us  that  celestial  music  floated  over  that 
party  as  they  journeyed  to  Rome,  and  that  mir- 
acles waited  upon  their  steps,  attesting  the  joy  of 
heaven  and  earth  over  the  new  era  that  had 
dawned  upon  the  church. 

During  the  six  years  of  Leo's  pontificate,  Hil- 
debrand held  complete  sway  over  his  policy  and 
mind.  When  Leo  died,  it  was  by  the  masterly 
art  of  Hildebrand,  foiling  the  emperor's  wishes, 
that  a  successor  was  chosen,  best  fitted  of  all  liv- 
ing bishops  to  carry  out  his  high-church  views. 
And  when  he  died,  another,  and,  beyond  the 
third,  a  fourth,  was  clothed  with  the  papal  office, 
in  accordance  with  his  own  wishes,  till  we  come 
to  Alexander  I.,  the  fifth  pope  nominated  through 
the  influence  of  Hildebrand,  and  pledged  to  his 
principles  of  reform.  Swiftly  he  rises  from  office 
to  office  ;  —  he  is  cardinal-deacon,  cardinal-arch- 
deacon, legate  to  France,  imperial  legate,  and,  at 
last,  chancellor  of  the  Holy  See,  —  an  office  next 
in  rank  to  the  papacy  itself.  There  is  continual 
evidence  through  these  years  of  a  masterly,  per- 
sistent, organizing  mind  in  Rome,  pledging  the 
power  of  the  short-lived  popes  to  a  great  con- 
structive work.  His  messengers  are  flying  from 
kingdom  to  kingdom,  spinning  the  web  of  his 
9* 


2O2  Hildebrand. 

polity  over  every  state.  Edict  after  edict  appears 
against  the  marriage  of  the  clergy ;  the  sale  of  the 
church  offices  by  laymen,  and  the  purchase  of 
place  by  the  clergy,  are  visited  with  the  anathema 
of  Rome ;  and,  more  important,  perhaps,  for  the 
moment,  than  both,  the  power  of  appointing  to 
the  papacy  is  wrested  from  the  emperor  and 
lodged  with  the  college  of  cardinals,  —  a  revolu- 
tion whose  effects  are  visible  in  the  order  of  papal 
elections  now.  He  worked  so  fast  that  the  ene- 
mies of  his  policy  were  confounded.  One  who 
felt  his  power,  and  who  had  no  love  for  him,  said  : 
"  The  small  sinewy  tiger  distances  all  arrows  by 
his  speed." 

Hildebrand,  however,  during  those  years,  is  sel- 
dom prominent  in  the  annals  of  the  active  stage, 
although  we  do  see  him,  for  once,  as  legate  in 
France,  presiding  over  a  council  to  inquire  into 
charges  against  bishops  for  purchasing  their  of- 
fices ;  one  scene  of  which  is  dramatic  and  strik- 
ing. A  bishop  who  was  on  trial  before  him, 
arid  who  was  known  to  have  bought  his  dignitf, 
had  bribed  his  accusers  over  night,  and  then  the 
next  day  proudly  challenged  in  the  court-room 
any  evidence  to  his  damage.  There  was  silence. 
Hildebrand  was  confident  of  his  guilt,  and  said 
to  him,  with  an  expression  of  sorrow,  "  Do  you 
believe  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  of  the  same  sub- 
stance as  the  Father  and  the  Son  1"  "  I  do,"  was 
the  response.  "  Then,"  Hildebrand  continued, 
fixing  his  eye  upon  him,  "  say  the  Gloria  Patri." 


Hildebrand.  203 

The  bishop  commenced,  but  could  not  speak  the 
words  "the  Holy  Spirit,v  while  that  wintry  eye 
was  piercing  him,  though  he  tried  three  times. 
Then  he  cast  himself  at  the  feet  of  Hildebrand, 
confessed  his  crime,  was  degraded  from  his  office, 
and  immediately  found  the  power  to  pronounce 
the  words  that  had  fettered  his  tongue. 

But  this  personal  magnetism  of  Hildebrand  was, 
for  the  most  part,  used  in  Rome  to  control  the 
nominal  rulers  of  Christendom,  and  to  dictate 
through  them  the  policy  of  the  church.  For 
twenty-five  years  he  was  thus  the  power  behind 
the  throne,  greater  than  the  throne.  Popes  were 
his  speaking-trumpets.  The  anathemas  of  coun- 
cils were  the  language  of  his  passion,  and  revolu- 
tionary decrees  the  wings  of  his  ideas.  He  was 
called  the  "  lord  of  the  lord  pope."  While  Alex- 
ander II.  was  in  power  one  of  Hildebrand's 
friends  wrote  to  him,  "  You  made  him  pope ;  he 
made  you  a  god."  In  these  twenty-five  years 
more  had  been  done  to  detach  the  church,  as  an 
institution,  from  the  state,  and  to  knit  its  fibres 
as  a  permanent  and  progressive  organization,  than 
in  the  two  preceding  centuries. 

In  1073  Alexander  II.,  an  easy,  pleasure-loving, 
pompous  man,  the  last  of  six  popes  who  had  been 
under  the  influence  of  Hildebrand,  died.  The 
monk  of  Cluny,  who  was  thirty-five  years  old 
when  he  left  the  monastery,  was  now  sixty.  He 
was  conducting  the  funeral  service  over  the  de- 
parted pontiff,  in  the  Lateran  church,  when  the 


204  Hildebrand. 

solemnities  were  interrupted  by  the  shouts  of  the 
people,  —  shouts  which- his  enemies  say  he  had 
paid  for  with  gold,  — "  St.  Peter  chooses  the 
archdeacon  Hildebrand  for  pope."  A  cardinal 
sprang  forward  and  exclaimed,  "  Ye  know  well, 
brethren,  that  since  the  days  of  Leo  this  tried 
and  prudent  archdeacon  has  exalted  the  Roman 
See,  and  delivered  this  city  from  many  perils. 
Wherefore  we  the  bishops  and  cardinals  elect  him 
now,  with  one  mind,  as  the  pastor  and  bishop  of 
your  souls."  The  speaker's  voice  was  lost  amid 
wild  cries  from  the  crowd,  "  It  is  the  will  of  St. 
Peter ;  Hildebrand  is  pope."  The  scarlet  robe 
and  the  papal  crown  were  brought  out ;  and  the 
son  of  a  Tuscan  carpenter,  the  bowed  and  shriv- 
elled monk  of  Cluny,  the  man  whose  head  held 
a  more  audacious  scheme  of  ecclesiastical  author- 
ity than  any  pope  had  ever  dreamed  before,  was 
led,  as  the  story  runs,  reluctant  and  in  tears,  to 
St.  Peter's  chair,  with  the  title  "  Gregory  the 
Seventh." 

We  may  well  believe  that  he  was  reluctant  to 
assume  that  mitre.  His  very  consciousness  of 
superior  fitness  for  it,  the  breadth,  austerity,  and 
splendor  of  his  conception  of  what  the  pope  and 
the  church  should  be,  must  have  made  him  recoil 
from  the  obligations  and  labors  which  that  robe 
and  that  crown  would  impose  upon  his  mind. 
How,  out  of  an  ignorant  clergy,  a  debased,  cor- 
rupted, licentious  clergy,  —  how,  out  of  bishops, 
the  majority  of  whom  were  tainted  by  having  pur- 


Hildebrand.  205 

chased  their  positions  with  gold,  —  how,  against 
princes,  kings,  and  emperors  who  denied  the 
supremacy  of  the  papacy  over  their  thrones,  and 
were  held  to  spiritual  allegiance  to  the  church 
only  by  their  fears,  should  he,  bowed  with  labors 
and  beginning  to  bend  with  years,  be  able  to 
build  up  the  great  edifice  of  a  church  whose 
walls  should  enclose  every  kingdom  of  Europe, 
and  before  whose  altar  kings  should  kneel  in  rev- 
erence, to  hear  their  disputes  adjusted  by  author- 
ity, to  be  condemned  for  disobedience,  and  to 
receive  their  crowns  ?  This  was  his  vision  ;  and 
if  he  steps  into  the  papacy,  he  must  turn,  day 
after  day,  from  his  communion  with  this  dazzling 
and  august  conception,  to  look  at  the  barbarous 
and  unjointed  Europe,  and  the  ignorant,  lazy,  and 
sensual  church,  which  offer  to  him  the  only  ma- 
terial for  shaping  out  and  perpetuating  the  dream  ! 
No  wonder  that  he  preferred  to  be  the  whispering 
counsellor  in  the  ears  of  popes,  doing  something 
slowly  thus  for  the  great  cause,  rather  than  to  feel 
the  whole  responsibility  upon  his  shoulders,  by 
taking  in  his  own  person  the  office  of  vicegerent 
of  God ! 

He  commended  himself  with  great  fervor  to  the 
help  of  St.  Peter  and  the  Virgin ;  spent  a  few 
months,  with  wily  Italian  caution,  in  intrenching 
his  power ;  and  then  struck  with  frightful  energy 
at  the  evils  within  the  church  that  stood  in  his 
way. 

First,  at  the  marriage  of  the  clergy.     It  had 


206  Hildebrand. 

been  denounced  before  by  the  popes  whom  he 
controlled  ;  but  now  it  was  as  if  for  the  first  time 
the  wrestle  of  a  papal  idea  with  a  myriad-handed 
passion  had  really  commenced.  He  determined 
to  outroot  the  evil  of  a  married  ministry,  and  to 
lay  the  corner-stone  of  his  great  structure  on  a 
celibate  priesthood.  He  forbade  the  people  to 
attend  mass  where  his  edict  was  not  obeyed,  or 
to  receive  any  service  from  any  married  priest. 
"  Their  prayer  is  sin,"  he  said ;  "  their  blessing 
will  be  to  you  a  curse."  He  allowed  no  time  for 
dallying  with  the  law.  Men  that  were  devoted  to 
their  families  must  instantly  give  them  up.  Mar- 
riages sanctified  by  the  tenderest  love  and  the 
sweetest  domestic  happiness  were  placed  under 
the  same  ban  with  connections  looser  and  impure. 
In  Italy,  France,  and  Germany  the  bishops  and 
priests  were  stirred  almost  to  madness.  Councils 
broke  up  in  mobs,  and  the  lives  of  legates  were 
scarcely  saved.  The  clergy  quoted  Scripture 
against  the  infallible  head  of  the  church.  In 
many  cases,  doubtless,  it  was  all  the  Scripture 
they  were  familiar  with ;  just  as  now  we  find  a 
very  general  acquaintance  with  the  injunction  to 
take  a  little  wine  for  the  stomach's  sake  among 
men  who  would  be  puzzled  to  know  where  to  look 
for  it,  or  to  tell  whether  it  was  said  by  Moses,  Job, 
.or  Judas.  Peter,  they  said,  was  married;  Paul 
did  not  forbid  it  to  the  clergy ;  Jesus  left  it  op- 
tional. They  howled  in  councils  the  charge  to 
Timothy,  "  The  bishop  must  be  sober,  the  husband 


Hildebrand.  207 

of  one  wife."  They  insisted  that  they  would  re- 
nounce their  priesthood  sooner  than  their  mar- 
riage vow.  "If  the  pope  is  not  satisfied  with  men 
to  serve  the  churches,  let  him  turn  us  out,"  they 
said,  "and  then  find  angels  for  his  purposes." 

His  missionaries  were  frightened,  and  pressed 
him  to  abate  his  rigor.  But  no  expostulations 
availed  with  the  steel-handed  prelate  who  ruled  in 
Rome.  The  miseries  of  the  poor  women,  wives 
of  the  priests,  who  were  condemned  by  his  de- 
crees as  infamous  and  abandoned,  the  tidings  of 
how  they  killed  themselves  as  their  homes  were 
invaded  and  broken  up,  did  not  move  him.  He 
played  for  an  idea,  a  system,  a  future.  He  knew 
that  he  had  a  party  in  the  church,  though  in  the 
minority,  which  was  devoted  to  him  as  the  hand 
to  the  brain ;  he  believed  that  he  could  rely  upon 
the  help  of  the  people,  by  exciting  them  to  spir- 
itual rebellion  against  disobedient  priests  ;  and  he 
determined  to  carry  the  measure  through,  though 
Europe  was  in  an  uproar,  and  the  church  was 
rocking.  He  was  cruel,  as  a  revolutionary  intel- 
lect, when  at  work,  is  always  cruel ;  because  its 
ideas  are  not  framed  with  any  regard  to  the  way 
in  which  human  affections  are  inwoven  with  an 
imperfect  social  organization. 

We  will  not  ask  the  reader  to  consider  the  wis- 
dom or  the  righteousness  of  this  movement.  We 
have  only  to  say,  seeing  how  cold  and  how  fierce 
Christian  theology  has  been  "thus  far  in  history, 
Heaven  save  us  from  such  theology  as  we  should 


208  Hildebrand. 

have  if  all  the  teachers  of  it  were  to  be  forever 
strangers  to  the  duties  and  sanctities  of  home ; 
if  the  doctrine  of  God  the  Father  were  to  be 
perpetually  intrusted  to  the  interpretation  of  men 
who  know  nothing  of  parental  yearnings,  sacri- 
fices, and  joys;  if  the  hands  of  little  children  were 
never  laid  upon  the  grim  features  of  a  monkish 
creed ! 

More  self-denial  has  been  exhibited  in  the 
Protestant  order  of  a  married  clergy  than  the 
Catholic  system  nourishes  or  admits.  The  mili- 
tary hardships  and  fidelity  of  the  Jesuits  in  their 
missionary  enterprises  look  more  dramatic;  but 
the  life-long,  uncomplaining  wrestle  with  poverty 
by  the  hearthstone,  which  is  the  general  law  with 
the  Protestant  ministry  of  our  country  now,  and 
the  bloom  of  the  sternest  virtues  and  the  gentlest 
graces  in  such  ungenial  circumstances,  are  a  more 
precious  contribution  to  the  glory  of  the  Gospel 
than  the  average  character  of  a  drilled  celibate 
priesthood  can  ever  show.  Had  Hildebrand's 
idea  been  the  law  for  all  Christendom,  the  church 
would  have  lost  from  the  army  of  her  martyrs  the 
wives  of  the  poor  modern  Protestant  clergy,  who 
will  largely  swell  the  number  of  those  who  are 
made  perfect  through  suffering,  and  go  through 
much  tribulation  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

Turn  the  eye  for  a  moment  from  the  righteous- 
ness of  Hildebrand's  movement,  and  raise  the 
question  of  its  success.  Look  at  the  Catholic 
priesthood  and  hierarchy  to-day.  So  far  as  the 


Hildebrand,  209 

strength  of  a  church,  such  as  he  dreamed  of,  is 
concerned,  the  policy  of  his  terrible  decree  is  in- 
terpreted at  once,  when  we  ask  ourselves  how 
much  weaker  the  Romish  system  and  hierarchy 
would  be  if  their  priesthood  were  not,  as  now,  an 
01  der  in  the  world  and  yet  not  of  it ;  if  they  were 
bound  by  domestic  and  social  ties  with  the  life 
and  passions  of  the  communities  which  they  serve; 
if  the  whole  energies  of  their  nature  were  not,  as 
by  the  present  system  they  are  compelled  to  be, 
pledged  to  the  power  and  glory  of  the  church, 
and  trained  along  those  subtle  trellises  that  lead 
from  every  hamlet  and  every  city  directly  to  St. 
Peter's  and  the  Vatican !  It  may  be  of  interest 
to  many  of  those  who  are  devoted  to  the  cause  of 
women's  rights  to  learn  that  two  women,  prin- 
cesses of  Italy,  were  invited,  by  a  letter  from 
Hildebrand,  to  preside  over  the  deliberations  of 
that  council  that  did  so  much  to  dishonor  woman- 
hood by  making  the  acceptance  of  the  family  bond 
and  order  a  sin  in  every  official  servant  of  Him 
whose  first  miracle  was  wrought  at  a  marriage 
feast. 

While  Europe  was  in  turmoil  from  the  effects 
of  that  decree,  Hildebrand  struck  a  blow,  still 
more  startling,  at  simony  in  the  church,  and  at 
the  temporal  power  over  spiritual  officers.  He 
not  only  denounced  all  who  had  paid  money  for 
their  places,  and  deposed  them,  but  he  astonished 
the  world  with  the  edict  that  "  if  any  person  ac- 
cepts any  bishopric,  or  office  of  abbot,  or  any 


2 1  o  Hildebrand. 

lower  spiritual  rank,  from  the  hands  of  a  layman, 
he  shall  not  be  regarded  as  a  bishop,  or  an  abbot," 
or  a  clergyman  ;  while  every  individual  of  the  laity, 
be  he  king  or  emperor,  who  bestows  investiture 
in  connection  with  such  office,  shall  be  excluded 
from  church  communion."  Remember  that  the 
abbots  and  bishops  in  the  Middle  Ages  were  not 
only  officers  of  the  church,  but  were  also  tem- 
poral princes.  They  held  lands,  forests,  castles, 
and  serfs.  They  were  prominent  supporters  of 
the  civil  and  royal  order  of  society.  The  claim 
of  Gregory,  therefore,  that  they  should  be  nomi- 
nated in  every  country  only  from  Rome,  and 
should  receive  their  badges  of  power  from  the 
sovereign  pontiff,  was  nothing  less  than  a  social 
revolution.  It  made  every  bishop  and  priest  de- 
pendent at  once  upon  the  papacy.  It  struck  from 
the  monarchy  of  every  country  its  wealthiest  and 
most  learned  adherents.  It  put  half  the  land, 
and  more  than  half  the  wealth,  of  Europe  at  once 
in  the  control  of  the  pope.  Carry  out  this  plan, 
and  the  sacerdotal  power  is  instantly  a  kingdom 
within  all  other  kingdoms,  as  distinct  from  the 
body  politic  as  a  cancer  is  distinct  from  the  frame 
in  which  it  runs,  and  perhaps  as  deadly,  by  its 
steady  absorption,  to  the  forces  of  the  body's  life. 
Gregory  put  all  his  passion  and  firmness  into 
this  movement,  as  he  did  into  the  edicts  against 
concubinage.  And  here  again,  if  we  wish  to 
know  the  permanent  influence  of  Hildebrand,  we 
may  ask  the  question,  Who  appoints  Cardinal 


Hildebrand.  211 

Wiseman  to  England,  nominates  the  head  of  the 
church  in  France,  invests  the  Archbishop  of  New 
York,  or  designates  the  Metropolitan  at  Balti- 
more ?  The  arm  of  that  crooked  monk  of  Cluny 
reaches  down  eight  hundred  years,  affecting  our 
society,  and  keeping  alive  an  interest  in  his 
schemes  in  our  politics.  With  that  decree  began 
a  long  and  strenuous  wrestle  between  the  papacy 
and  the  temporal  power,  such  as  the  world  had 
not  seen  before,  and  has  never  witnessed  since. 
The  Emperor  of  Germany,  Henry  the  Fourth, 
was  a  very  young  man.  He  had  been  badly 
educated  ;  was  passionate,  wilful,  and  vacillat- 
ing; and  was  surrounded  by  intriguing  bishops 
who  slyly  encouraged  his  vices,  and  by  quarrelling 
nobles  who  fretted  under  his  authority.  Gregory, 
no  doubt,  wanted  to  test  and  to  establish  his  own 
principles  in  Europe  by  a  rupture  with  the  strip- 
ling monarch.  A  better  opportunity  he  could 
not  hope  for.  He  had  outwitted  the  father, 
Henry  the  Third,  a  very  able  ruler,  by  his  diplo- 
macy ;  and  he  felt,  probably,  that  he  could  easily 
overbear  the  feebler  son  by  the  prestige  of  his 
office  and  the  energy  of  his  mind.  The  young 
emperor  showed  no  zeal  in  carrying  out  the  new 
papal  decrees  against  marriage  and  simony ;  and 
his  life  was  dissolute.  Hildebrand  wrote  to  him 
admonishing  him  for  his  crimes,  and  then,  after  a 
while,  summoned  him  to  Rome  to  answer  there, 
before  his  tribunal,  for  various  and  undefined 
offences.  It  was  a  bold  step  even  for  a  bold  pope. 


212  Hildebrand. 

Henry  instantly  replied  by  a  still  bolder  one. 
Hildebrand's  policy  was  getting  to  be  intolerable  ; 
it  perilled  the  liberty  of  priests  and  prelates  as 
well  as  kings  ;  and  bishops  enough  were  suddenly 
collected  from  Henry's  dominions  to  depose  Hil- 
debrand,  by  vote  of  a  council,  as  a  licentious 
priest,  a  false  pope,  a  cruel  tyrant,  and  a  sorcerer. 
Such  was  the  answer  the  young  ruler  sent  by  a 
messenger,  who  delivered  it  roughly  to  Gregory's 
face,  as  he  was  presiding  over  a  council,  in  the 
year  1076.  Hildebrand,  we  may  believe,  rejoiced 
at  the  insult  and  the  insurrection.  It  offered  him 
the  most  splendid  temptation  to  stretch  his  claims 
of  power  to  the  utmost,  —  to  clothe  one  of  the 
most  audacious  of  his  assumptions  in  a  decree. 
In  full  council  he  excommunicated  Henry  the 
Emperor,  interdicted  him  from  the  government 
of  Germany  and  Italy,  and  pronounced  him  de- 
throned. "  I  absolve  all  Christians  from  the 
oaths  they  have  sworn  or  may  swear  to  him  ;  and 
forbid  all  obedience  to  him  as  king.  I  bind  him 
in  the  bonds  of  thy  anathema ;  that  all  the  nations 
may  know  and  acknowledge  that  thou  art  Peter, 
that  upon  thy  rock  the  Son  of  the  living  God  has 
built  his  church,  and  that  the  gates  of  hell  shall 
not  prevail  against  it."  It  was  the  first  time  in 
the  history  of  Christendom  that  such  a  sentence 
had  been  uttered  against  a  sovereign,  —  the  first 
time  that  a  pope  had  presumed  to  strike  beyond 
the  soul  of  a  monarch  at  his  temporal  crown. 
Some  chroniclers  hostile  to  Gregory  relate,  in  the 


Hildebrand,  213 

very  spirit  of  the  literature  of  the  Dark  Ages,  that 
when  the  pope  took  his  seat  after  this  awful 
decree,  the  chair  of  St.  Peter  cracked  asunder, 
though  the  wood  was  new  and  strong,  as  a  type 
of  the  social  distractions  that  were  to  follow  that 
curse. 

On  all  the  bishops,  also,  who  had  aided  Henry, 
the  terrible  edict  fell.  The  Vatican  blazed  with 
wrath  like  Vesuvius,  and  maledictions  spouted  in 
showers  from  its  crater  through  the  sulphurous 
air.  Hildebrand  had  no  soldiers  to  support  his 
startling  pretension.  The  monks  were  pledged 
to  him.  He  was  making  the  first  trial  of  the 
new  machinery  of  Rome,  —  traditions  in  place 
of  truth  ;  priests  inviolable  ;  the  recently  estab- 
lished doctrine  of  transubstantiation ;  bishops  and 
abbots  proclaimed  as  independent  of  secular  au- 
thority ;  and  through  these  the  mystic  sanctity 
and  despotism  of  the  Holy  See.  His  party  were 
in  the  minority  even  in  the  church  itself;  but  he 
wasted  no  thought  upon  the  seeming  inequality 
of  the  struggle.  He  trusted  to  the  moral  effect 
which  a  papal  decree  would  carry  with  it,  and  to 
the  vigor  with  which  his  arm  had  hurled  the 
doom  against  the  most  powerful  monarch  of 
Europe. 

Henry  affected  to  despise  the  judgment  of 
the  Vatican  ;  but  he  soon  found  that  Hildebrand's 
anathema  was  abroad  in  all  the  air  of  Germany, 
and  was  slowly  corroding  the  sinews  of  his 
strength.  It  was  read  in  churches  ;  it  crept  along 


214  Hildtbrand. 

from  castle"  to  castle,  from  village  to  village,  from 
house  to  house,  disturbing  bishops,  making  barons 
uneasy,  frightening  priests,  appalling  the  people 
with  subtle  superstitious  dread.  Henry  might  be 
ruler  of  the  earth ;  but  Gregory  was  "  prince  of 
the  powers  of  the  air."  The  overarching  region 
of  sentiment,  the  impalpable  mental  element, 
obeyed  the  electric  pulses  of  his  mitred  genius. 
One  of  the  prominent  princely  agents  in  that 
insult  to  the  pope  died  suddenly  and  mysteri- 
ously. The  cathedral  in  which  the  partisans  of 
Henry  had  excommunicated  the  pope  was  struck 
by  lightning.  Slowly  the  combination  that  had 
promised  to  support  the  monarch  crumbled.  Prov- 
inces revolted;  bishops  stole  away  to  Rome  to 
make  their  peace  with  the  terrible  Hildebrand, 
and,  on  their  return,  would  have  no  intercourse 
with  the  emperor.  Henry  began  to  feel  like  a 
leprous  man  in  his  own  dominions.  In  a  few 
months  he  was  almost  deserted. 

Gregory  had  threatened  that,  unless  he  made 
his  peace  with  the  church  within  a  year  from  his 
sentence,  orders  should  be  given  to  elect  a  new 
emperor.  The  year  was  fast  rolling  away.  It 
would  close  in  February  of  1077.  Midwinter 
came,  and  Henry  found  that  there  was  no  hope 
but  in  bending  before  the  proud  priest  who  had 
laid  such  a  spell  upon  his  realm.  He  must  turn 
his  steps  towards  Italy.  He  must  cross  the  Alps 
through  winter  snows  and  storms.  But  even 
nature  was  against  him,  for  so  bitter  a  winter  had 


Hildebrand.  2 1 5 

not  been  known  for  years.  With  his  wife  and 
infant  son  and  one  attendant,  he  set  out  on  his 
journey,  and  attempted  the  pass  of  Mont  Cenis. 

Is  there  any  other  scene  so  impressive  in  the 
secular  history  of  the  world  ?  The  Emperor  of 
Germany  toiling  up  the  white  and  slippery  preci- 
pices of  Switzerland,  clinging  to  the  shoulders  of 
the  guide,  creeping  down  the  sides  of  icy  ravines 
on  his  hands  and  knees,  or  rolling  along  the 
steeper  declivities  at  the  peril  of  his  life,  and 
seeing  his  queen  and  infant  drawn  up  and  let 
down  by  the  mountaineers  in  great  bags  made 
of  the  skins  of  oxen,  in  order  that,  by  personal 
humiliation  and  penance,  the  deadly  spell  might 
be  revoked,  which  the  words  of  a  monk,  sitting 
in  St.  Peter's  chair,  had  breathed  upon  his  power, 
his  hopes,  and  his  heart !  Look  steadily  at  that 
figure  of  the  emperor  among  the  Alpine  snows 
toiling  towards  Lombardy,  for  it  shows  you  in 
one  scene  the  climax  of  the  papal  power  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  Rome  has  no  such  other  monu- 
ment in  its  annals  as  that  chilled  emperor  on  the 
summit  of  Mont  Cenis,  drawn  from  his  palace  in 
midwinter  by  the  power  of  an 'idea!  And  yet 
pause,  one  moment  more,  to  admire  something  in 
that  scene  more  lasting  and  more  noble  than  the 
power  of  the  Vatican,  —  the  love,  the  patient, 
forgetful,  forgiving  love  of  a  woman  and  a  wife ! 
Henry  the  Emperor  had  ill  treated  the  princess 
who  was  his  companion  in  that  winter  journey  ; 
he  had  neglected  her,  had  been  faithless  to  her, 


216  Hildebrand. 

and  had  striven  to  be  divorced  from  her.  But 
she  was  always  gentle  and  faithful  amid  her 
wrongs  ;  and  now  she  clings  to  him  in  spite  of 
papal  ban  and  general  desertion,  —  yes,  though 
his  own  mother  had  forsaken  him,  —  and  braves 
the  savage  Alps  with  her  delicate  frame,  to  show 
us  that  there  are  affections  in  our  nature  that  will 
jet  out  in  unselfish  heroism,  as  sublime  as  any 
stimulated  by  ambition  or  provoked  by  spiritual 
fear. 

Hildebrand  was  at  the  castle  of  a  faithful  friend 
in  Canosa.  The  emperor  arrived  at  its  gate,  sup- 
posing that  he  should  be  instantly  admitted  to  the 
papal  presence,  —  that  his  winter  journey  would 
be  accepted  as  a  sufficient  penance  and  abase- 
ment. But  the  end  was  not  yet ;  Hildebrand  re- 
fused to  see  him.  "  Let  him  submit  his  cause,"  he 
said,  "  to  a  council  in  Germany  over  which  I  will 
preside."  Eager  to  make  his  peace  with  Gregory, 
the  emperor  clothed  himself  in  a  thin  white  linen 
dress,  and,  passing  through  the  two  outer  gates  of 
the  castle,  stood  bareheaded  in  the  snow,  on  a 
bleak  morning  in  January,  before  the  inner  wall. 
A  second  day  found  him  in  the  same  position. 
The  third  day  he  was  still  there,  cold  and  hun- 
gry ;  for  the  inner  gate,  like  Hildebrand's  heart, 
was  still  closed  against  him.  At  last  he  was  ad- 
mitted to  the  pope,  —  a  noble-looking  youth,  tall 
and  commanding  in  form,  wearing  an  imperial 
grace,  representing  well  the  kingly  idea,  before 
the  bent,  diminutive,  implacable  Hildebrand  !  The 


Hildebmnd.  217 

terms  of  reconciliation  were  cautious  and  severe. 
The  earthly  power  must  be  utterly  broken  before 
the  majesty  of  the  church.  Henry  yielded  to  all, 
in  order  that  the  terrible  excommunication  might 
be  revoked  ;  and  then  attended  church  with  the 
pope,  to  have  his  humiliation  complete.  Having 
granted  him  absolution  at  the  altar,  Hildebrand 
took  the  consecrated  wafer,  lifted  his  hands  in 
presence  of  the  crowd,  and  called  on  God  to 
strike  him  at  once  with  his  judgment,  as  he  par- 
took of  the  Lord's  body,  if  he  were  guilty  of  the 
charges  his  enemies  had  made,  —  if  his  motives 
were  not  pure.  He  ate  the  wafer,  and  stood 
unharmed  while  the  congregation  burst  forth  in 
cheers.  He  then  offered  the  same  ordeal  to  the 
emperor,  to  test  whether  his  motives  had  been 
as  clear ;  but  Henry  trembled,  and  declined  the 
awful  test.  Hildebrand's  victory  was  thus  com- 
plete, but  he  had  overshot  the  mark.  The  young 
emperor  left  his  presence  outwardly  humble,  in- 
wardly enraged. 

Instead  of  peace,  therefore,  this  dramatic  tri- 
umph of  Gregory  conjured  a  storm  that  desolated 
his  later  years.  Henry  broke  all  the  terms  of  his 
compact,  one  by  one.  The  tyranny  of  Gregory, 
in  that  personal  interview,  was  like  the  point  of 
Ithuriel's  spear ;  —  a  manly  spirit  leaped  out  from 
Henry's  degraded  breast  which  astonished  his 
subjects.  He  organized,  with  more  energy  than 
he  had  ever  shown  before,  an-  opposition  to  the 
man  who  had  trodden  upon  him  so  ruthlessly ; 
10 


2 1 8  Hildebrand. 

and  even  went  so  far  as  to  depose  him  once 
more,  and  elect  another  pope  in  Germany,  whom 
he  determined  to  place  by  his  sword  in  St.  Peter's 
chair  in  Rome.  Hildebrand  consecrated  another 
emperor,  who  was  chosen  by  a  portion  of  the  Ger- 
mans, in  Henry's  place ;  and  so,  for  several  years, 
the  powers  of  church  and  state  grappled  each 
other  in  the  wrestle  for  supremacy. 

But  Hildebrand's  pretensions  and  schemes  were 
not  at  all  affected  by  the  temporary  fortunes  of 
this  strife,  and  went  far  beyond  all  that  a  favor- 
able issue  in  the  contest  with  Henry  could  have 
secured  to  him.  He  styled  the  council  that 
elected  another  pope  "an  assembly  of  Satan, 
whose  lives  are  detestable,  and  whose  ordination 
heretical."  Our  contempt  for  them,  he  says,  is 
in  proportion  to  their  seeming  elevation.  He 
excommunicates  them  all.  His  passions,  and  the 
weapons  of  his  adherents,  were  engaged  with  one 
emperor ;  his  mind  was  busy  with  plans  of  au- 
thority over  all  countries  and  all  ages.  No  vol- 
umes in  literature  are  so  remarkable  as  his  letters, 
—  so  amazing  in  the  contrast  of  their  pretension 
to  authority  with  the  power  to  execute  it.  Time 
after  time,  and  in  the  boldest  terms,  he  made  the 
claims  that  the  church  must  not  only  be  inde- 
pendent of  the  civil  power,  but  dominant  over  it ; 
that  kingdoms  were  only  districts  of  the  papal 
possessions,  and  that  monarchs  were  his  vassals. 
Claims  that  it  should  seem  could  be  put  forth 
only  by  a  hot  brained  fanatic  in  feverish  diction, 


Hildebrand.  219 

he  uttered  in  cool,  square  sentences,  fortified  by 
logic,  and  sometimes  by  historic  evidence.  He 
gloated  over  his  title-deeds  to  nations,  and  un- 
rolled them  now  and  then  in  the  face  of  Europe. 
The  great  empire  of  the  West,  he  contended,  it 
was  his  to  give  with  the  imperial  crown ;  and  so 
he  would  never  date  his  letters,  as  former  popes 
had  done,  according  to  the  years  of  the  emperor's 
reign,  but  by  a  chronology  of  his  own.  Saxony 
in  particular,  he  pretended,  had  been  given  to  St. 
Peter  by  Charlemagne,  who  conquered  it.  Den- 
mark he  claimed,  in  a  letter  to  its  king,  and 
offered,  for  a  consideration,  to  give  him  a  province 
occupied  by  heretics,  as  an  independent  domain 
for  one  of  his  children.  Twice  he  made,  in  form, 
a  claim  that  Spain  belonged  to  St.  Peter  before 
the  invasion  of  the  Saracens  ;  and  expressed  his 
preference  that  it  should  remain  under  infidels, 
rather  than  under  Christian  monarchs  who  would 
rot  submit  to  his  authority.  He  informed  rulers 
of  Sardinia  that  St.  Peter  owned  their  country,  and 
threatened  to  give  it  away  if  they  were  not  more 
obedient, — especially  if  the  archbishop  and  his 
clergy  did  not  shave  their  beards,  according  to 
the  general  Western  custom.  He  informed  the 
King  of  Hungary  that  that  country  belonged  to 
the  Roman  Church,  because  the  first  conqueror 
of  it  had  sent  a  lance  and  a  crown  to  the  body 
of  St.  Peter.  He  made  the  same  pretensions  to 
Dalmatia,  in  a  formal  letter,  and  even  to  Russia, 
in  a  missive  to  King  Demetrius.  The  monarch 


22O  Hildebrand. 

of  France,  also,  is  treated  to  similar  epistles,  and 
Africa  he  claims  as  part  of  his  domain.  With- 
out an  acre  of  ground  which  he  could  govern  by 
unquestioned  personal  authority,  he  looked  upon 
the  world  as  his  chess-board,  with  kings,  queens, 
bishops,  and  castles  as  the  subordinate  instru- 
ments of  his  play.  The  insane  man  who  gave 
the  word  of  command,  "  Attention  the  universe ! 
By  kingdoms,  wheel !  "  is  a  feeble  symbol  of  the 
claims  soberly  put  into  literature  in  the  epistles 
of  Gregory  VII. 

Even  to  William  the  Conqueror  of  England  he 
held  a  tone  equally  high.  W7hen  William  was  about 
to  start  on  his  invading  expedition,  Hildebrand, 
not  then  nominally  pope,  supported  his  cause  in  the 
college  of  cardinals,  sent  him  a  consecrated  ban- 
ner, and  also  a  ring  containing,  as  he  pretended, 
one  of  the  hairs  of  St.  Peter  set  under  a  diamond 
of  great  price.  He  commissioned  William  to 
bring  back  that  kingdom  to  obedience  to  the  Holy 
See,  and  re-establish  forever  there  the  tax  of 
Peter's  pence.  Only  from  William  the  Conqueror 
in  England,  however,  did  he  find  determined  re- 
sistance to  his  pretensions,  in  language  as  reso- 
lute as  any  he  used.  "  I  will  pay  tribute  to  the 
church,"  says  the  Norman  king ;  "  but  I  will 
never  swear  allegiance.  And  if  any  monk  of  my 
dominions  dares  to  carry  tales  to  Rome,  I  will 
hang  him  on  the  highest  tree  of  the  forest." 

We  cannot  but  stand  in  admiration  before  a 
scheme  of  society  in  which  empires  become  coun- 


Hildebrand.  221 

ties  of  a  vast  spiritual  monarchy ;  which  shows  us 
a  living  chain  of  priests  running  in  rising  links 
from  every  land  till  they  touch  and  encircle  St. 
Peter's  chair,  —  each  of  them  wearing  a  sanctity 
inviolable  in  every  latitude  by  any  ruler  ;  which 
abases  kings  as  the  lieutenants  of  the  great  spirit- 
ual Caliph  ;  which  promises  to  do  away  with  war, 
in  providing  that  all  disputes  between  countries 
and  rulers  shall  be  settled  by  a  word  from  the 
man  whose  blessing  is  the  only  virtue  of  a  crown. 
Futile  as  such  a  dream  must  be,  we  cannot  but 
admire  the  proportions  of  its  vision  ;  we  cannot 
but  revere  the  intellect  that  could  feel  it  as  its 
inspiration  ;  could  pour  the  life  of  logic  and  im- 
agination into  it ;  could  calmly  collect  its  almost 
superhuman  energies  to  intrench  it  on  the  earth ; 
and,  above  all,  that  could  retreat  within  the  ma- 
jestic symmetry  of  it  as  a  solace  in  time  of 
trouble ! 

Hildebrand  was  serene  amid  his  greatest  diffi- 
culties ;  his  calmness  was  unshaken ;  his  hopes 
never  flickered ;  his  confidence  in  his  mission  and 
the  majesty  of  his  office  never  failed.  When 
Henry  turned  against  him  the  second  time, — 
when  civil  war  was  waging  around  him,  he  says  in 
one  of  his  prayers  to  Jesus,  "if  you  had  imposed 
such  burdens  as  mine  upon  Moses  or  Peter,  I 
believe  they  would  have  been  overwhelmed." 
But  then  he  says  again,  "  When  the  good  Jesus 
stretches  out  his  hand  towards  me  I  am  filled  with 
joy."  His  enemies  said  he  was  in  constant  inter- 


222  Hildebrand. 

course  with  demons,  and  that  his  power  was  from 
them ;  but  he  supported  himself,  he  affirmed,  by 
the  help  which  the  Virgin  mother  vouchsafed  to 
him,  and  by  his  confidence  in  the  righteousness 
and  triumph  of  his  cause. 

As  difficulties  increased  around  him  his  spirit 
mounted,  and  the  rhetoric  grows  more  intense  in 
which  he  vindicates  his  scheme.  When  affairs 
went  against  his  party  in  Germany,  as  they  did  at 
last,  and  Henry  passed  the  Alps,  —  not,  as  before, 
a  suppliant  for  his  pardon,  but  with  an  army  to 
inaugurate  another  pope  in  his  stead,  —  so  far 
from  listening  to  any  terms,  he  writes  to  the 
bishops  who  deny  his  power  to  absolve  subjects 
from  their  duty  to  a  monarch,  "  What  are  kings 
and  princes  if  they  do  not  live  as  Christians  ? 
They  are  slaves  of  demons.  Every  exorcist  has 
power  over  demons,  and  so  over  them.  And  if 
exorcists  have  this  power,  how  much  more  the 
great  bishops  of  the  church  ?  Can  a  king  baptize  ? 
Can  a  king  make  the  body  and  blood  of  Christ 
by  a  word  ?  Does  not  a  king  on  his  death-bed 
implore  a  priest  to  save  him  from  the  eternal 
dungeon  of  hell  ?  Nay,  kingship  itself  is  only  an 
invasion  of  the  natural  equality  of  man,  ordained 
by  Providence  on  account  of  human  wickedness. 
It  has  no  inherent,  eternal  sanctity.  Good  Chris- 
tians, of  the  lowest  rank,  deserve  to  be  esteemed 
as  kings  more  than  bad  princes.  The  first  are 
members  of  Jesus  Christ ;  the  second  are  limbs 
of  the  Devil."  Well  may  a  church  historian  ask, 


Hildebrand.  223 

concerning  these  sentences,  "Are  we  reading  a 
journalist  of  Paris  in  1791?" 

Such  was  the  spirit  of  all  Gregory's  answers  to 
the  suggestion  of  compromise  with  his  foes.  Even 
when  Henry  held  part  of  Rome,  and  Gregory 
was  shut  up  in  the  castle  of  Angelo,  his  only 
terms  were,  "  Let  the  emperor  yield,  and  acknowl- 
edge my  authority  as  the  lord  of  princes,  and  I 
will  pardon  him  even  now  ! "  But  he  was  forced 
to  see  from  his  castle  a  procession  pass  to  the 
great  church  in  the  Eternal  City,  headed  by  Henry 
the  Fourth,  to  inaugurate  the  antipope.  Yes, 
another  scene,  alas !  more  terrible,  was  to  pass 
before  his  eye.  Some  Norman  troops  came  to 
his  relief;  drove  the  soldiers  of  Henry  from  the 
city ;  delivered  the  pope  from  his  imprisonment ; 
but  pillaged,  sacked,  and  burned  the  city.  Thou- 
sands of  the  Romans  were  sold  publicly  as  slaves. 
He  calmly  celebrated  mass  and  performed  mir- 
acles —  as  was  said  —  in  the  Lateran  church 
while  the  city  was  in  flames,  and  the  blood  of  the 
innocent  population  was  flowing  in  brooks  around 
him.  Neither  Goth  nor  Vandal,  it  has  been  said, 
neither  Greek  nor  German,  brought  such  desola- 
tion upon  Rome  as  this  capture  by  the  Normans, 
who  rescued  the  pope.  Hildebrand  began  his 
career  as  a  thinker  in  the  quiet  of  the  monastery 
of  Cluny,  looking  out  upon  its  peaceful  and  cul- 
tivated grounds ;  he  closed  his  course  by  flying 
from  the  city  which  he  thought  to  make  the  spirit- 
ual capital  of  the  world,  ravaged  and  stained  with 


224  Hildebrand. 

fire,  as  the  witness  of  what  those  principles  had 
done  in  his  lifetime  which  he  dreamed  over  in 
his  early  years. 

From  Rome  he  hastened  to  Salerno  in  Italy, 
to  breathe  a  quiet  air  before  he  passed  away.  He 
published  edicts  forbidding  laymen  to  touch  con- 
secrated vessels,  ordering  an  unequal  number  of 
signs  to  be  made  to  indicate  the  mystery  of  the 
Trinity,  and  wrote  again  to  William  the  Con- 
queror, urging  him  to  set  his  imprisoned  brother 
at  liberty,  because  he  had  respected  priests,  who, 
said  Gregory  in  his  missive,  are  "  the  pupil  of  the 
eye  of  Jesus  Christ!"  In  1085,  when  he  was 
seventy-two  years  old,  he  sank  to  rest.  On  his 
death-bed  he  was  asked  if  he  wished  to  pardon  any 
who  were  under  his  condemnation.  He  breathed 
his  character  in  the  reply :  "  I  absolve  and 
bless  all  those  who  believe  that  I  have  the  power 
to  do  it,  except  Henry  the  emperor,  the  antipope, 
and  their  adherents."  Against  them  his  fearful 
excommunication  must  stand.  His  last  words 
were  :  "  I  have  loved  justice  and  hated  iniquity ; 
therefore  I  die  in  exile."  The  Catholic  writers 
tell  of  miracles  that  have  frequently  been  wrought 
at  his  tomb.  In  1577  his  entire  remains,  with 
the  pontifical  ornaments,  were  found  in  Salerno ; 
but  it  was  not  till  1609  that  his  name  was  entered 
as  a  saint,  and  allowed  to  be  honored  by  a  public 
office  in  the  church  he  served. 

The  dying  curse  of  Gregory  upon  Henry  pre- 
served its  vitality  more  than  twenty  years.  His 


Hildebmnd.  225 

death  was  a  tragic  one ;  for  his  son  rebelled 
against  him,  —  that  son  whom  his  wife  had  carried 
in  her  arms  over  the  Alpine  ice  :  and  in  the  midst 
of  civil  war  he  died  of  a  broken  heart.  But  his 
body  was  refused  honorable  burial.  Under  the 
condemnation  of  the  church  in  life,  bishops  re- 
fused to  let  him  sleep  in  consecrated  ground  ;  and 
it  was  only  after  five  years  of  contention  that  he 
was  laid  away  in  the  vaults  of  his  ancestors. 

Hildebrand  belongs  in  the  list  of  the  world's 
great  men.  He  had  a  mind  competent  to  con- 
ceive a  vast  constructive  scheme  of  society,  the 
first  movements  to  establish  which  must  be  revo- 
lutions ;  and  he  had  the  courage  to  start  the 
revolutions,  not  from  any  love  of  discord,  but  as 
believing  that  the  world  would  gain  by  the  higher 
order  and  peace  that  would  be  permanently  in- 
stituted. His  ambition  seems  to  have  had  little 
personal  appetite  for  power  in  it.  He  lived  in  his 
ideas ;  and  his  ambition  was  for  the  sway  of  the 
principle  of  which  he  happened  to  be  the  supreme 
servant.  Among  all  the  great  men  that  have 
pledged  their  thought  and  power  to  the  polity  of 
the  Catholic  Church,  he  is  undoubtedly  the  impe- 
rial intellect ;  he  saw  in  largest  outline  and  most 
sublime  proportions  the  majesty  of  that  invisible 
kingdom  which,  for  centuries,  the  genius  of  Ca- 
tholicism has  toiled  with  uncomplaining,  wily,  and 
persistent  energy  to  establish  in  the  earth.  He 
stands  out  the  ablest  man  of  the  eleventh  century, 
indeed  of  several  successive  centuries,  without  a 
10*  o 


226  Hildebmnd. 

second  to  divide  with  him  the  claim  for  breadth 
of  mind  and  mental  courage. 

He  stands,  also,  above  his  age  by  his  superi- 
ority to  many  of  the  superstitions  and  to  the  fanati- 
cism of  his  period.  He  was  widely  accused  of 
sorcery ;  and  yet,  in  a  letter  to  the  King  of  Den- 
mark, he  urged  him  to  put  a  stop  to  the  abuse 
of  persecuting  innocent  women  as  witches.  He 
believed  in  the  absolute  power  of  the  church  over 
souls;  and  he  protested  against  the  abuse  of 
pardoning  a  single  sin  for  mere  outward  penance, 
or  on  any  other  conditions  than  heartfelt  sorrow 
and  reform.  He  was  educated  a  monk  \  and  he 
lamented  bitterly  over  the  unfaithfulness  of 
Christendom,  as  seen  in  the  crowds  that  sought 
the  quiet  life  of  the  monasteries,  contrasted  with 
the  few  who  were  willing  to  take  up  the  harder 
and  nobler  task  of  fidelity  to  truth  in  the  duties 
of  the  world.  He  reproved  the  Abbot  of  Cluny 
for  receiving  a  duke  within  its  shades,  who  wished 
to  lead  a  pious  life,  instead  of  urging  him  to 
continue  at  his  post ;  "  for  thus,"  he  says,  "  my 
brother,  you  have  left  a  hundred  thousand  Chris- 
tians without  their  natural  protector,  and  have 
gained  only  a  single  monk."  He  believed  in 
loyalty  to  the  church ;  and  yet  he  could  write 
these  words  :  "  To  aid  the  unfortunate  and  op- 
pressed, from  love  of  God,  I  consider  more  than 
fasting,  prayer,  vigils,  and  other  good  works,  be 
they  ever  so  many  ;  for  true  love  is  more  than 
the  other  virtues."  There  is  reason  to  believe 


Hildebrand.  227 

also  that  he  was  not  wholly  sound  on  the  Catholic 
dogma  of  transubstantiation,  —  that  his  powerful 
intellect  saw  through  the  grossness  of  that  su- 
perstition which  had  hardened  in  a  barbarous 
age. 

As  to  the  success  of  his  labors.  We  must  re- 
member that  he  played  for  the  future,  and  for  an 
institution.  No  great  institution  rises  in  history 
except  out  of  a  soul  which  is  the  acorn  of  it.  No 
speculation  ever  germinates  of  itself  into  a  fact. 
Plato's  fancied  republic  has  been  fruitless  and 
harmless.  It  is  an  idea  incarnate  in  a  man, 
heated  by  his  passions,  swelling  in  all  the  veins 
of  his  personality,  that  strikes  root  in  history; 
and  that  "  corn  is  not  quickened,  except  it  die." 
Hildebrand  was  planted,  and  the  Catholic  polity 
rose  out  of  his  grave.  His  first  victory  over 
Henry  was  premature,  and  his  subsequent  defeat 
was  not  fatal.  His  mitre  worked  miracles,  the 
legends  say,  after  he  died.  He  began  to  live  after 
he  died.  The  great  contest  raged  after  his  eyes 
were  closed.  The  marriage  of  the  clergy  was 
dishonored  in  the  Catholic  Church  in  all  after- 
time  by  his  uncompromising  denunciation ;  and,  in 
another  generation,  the  emperor  yielded  the  right 
of  investing  any  churchman  with  the  symbols  of 
office,  and  granted  freedom  of  election.  A  little 
moie  than  a  century  later  beheld  Pope  Innocent 
III.  practically  as  supreme  in  Europe  as  Hilde- 
brand's  policy  would  have  asked.  He  left  the 
church  in  the  gristle  ;  it  hardened  into  bone. 


228  Hildebrand. 

As  to  the  good  this  man  accomplished,  we  must 
give  a  divided  judgment.  So  far  as  he  has  helped 
to  suppress  liberty  of  thought,  through  the 
strength  and  skill  of  the  pressure  which  the  Cath- 
olic hierarchy  lays  upon  it  now,  he  has  proved  an 
enemy  to  his  race.  But  so  far  as  he  helped  to 
confirm,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the  power  of  the 
papacy,  and  build  up  the  unity  of  Latin  Christen- 
dom, he  did  an  immense  service ;  for  only  thus 
were  the  bonds  of  order  knit  through  a  society 
that  would  otherwise  have  dissolved  :  only  thus 
was  learning  preserved  through  the  Latin  tongue, 
that  was  kept  alive  as  the  language  of  religion  ; 
only  thus  was  "  a  bridge  thrown  over  the  chaos 
between  ancient  and  modern  civilization." 

The  central  error  of  Hildebrand's  system  and 
life  was  that  of  confounding  Christianity  with  any 
visible  institution  of  the  earth.  Men  are  insensibly 
seduced  into  methods  as  worldly  as  his,  betrayed 
into  passions  as  violent,  and  tempted  to  schemes 
as  bloody,  by  starting  with  the  idea  that  Chris- 
tianity must  wear  a  visible  body  on  the  earth, 
and  be  served  with  outward  implements.  If  we 
lodge  our  hopes  of  the  Gospel  in  the  success  of 
any  one  proud  institution,  we  shall  find  all  the 
impurities,  all  the  vices,  and  essentially  all  the 
crimes,  that  belong  to  the  earthly  man,  vitiating 
the  stream  that  flows  from  it,  just  as  we  have 
found  it  in  the  Catholic  Church ;  because  an 
institution  having  rank,  honors,  and  wealth  at  its 
disposal  will  be  managed  by  the  earthly  side,  the 


Hildebrand.  229 

unregenerate  forces,  of  human  nature.     The  king- 
dom of  God  cometh  not  with  observation. 

There  is  such  a  thing  possible  as  a  universal 
church.  It  exists  now  upon  the  earth.  It  is  the 
salt,  it  is  the  life-blood,  of  civilization.  Its  fibres 
run  across  the  boundaries  of  kingdoms ;  it  holds 
the  Christian  world  in  unity.  It  has  its  outward 
institutions,  though  they  are  not  such  as  the  monk 
of  Cluny  dreamed  of;  it  has  its  laws  and  min- 
isters, though  there  is  no  order,  such  as  he  pre- 
scribed, in  their  coming  and  their  rank.  It  is  not 
a  Catholic  polity,  nor  an  Episcopal  one,  nor  a 
Presbyterian  one,  no,  nor  all  systems  and  hier- 
archies combined.  Its  buildings  and  trophies  rise 
out  of  the  silent  pressures,  through  public  senti- 
ment and  private  hearts,  of  the  spirit  of  the  Gospel. 
Hospitals,  asylums,  and  schools  of  reform  are 
dots  in  the  landscape  of  its  power,  —  though  no 
papal  voice,  or  decree  of  council,  called  them 
into  being.  Every  church  built  out  of  the  desire 
of  worship  is  a  symbol  of  its  sway.  Every  work 
of  art,  showing  how  religion  has  refined  and  in- 
spired the  taste  for  beauty,  is  a  graceful  proof  of 
its  dominion.  Every  school  that  springs  from  a 
conviction  of  the  worth  of  man  and  his  right  to 
education  is  a  witness  of  its  vitality.  Every  law 
that  ordains  justice  over  the  clamorous  interests 
of  a  class  is  a  confession  of  its  majesty.  The 
affections  that  elevate  and  sweeten  and  hallow 
home,  and  the  charities  that  flow  out  of  mellow 
hearts  to  the  needy,  are  streams  of  its  life  and 


230  Hildebrand. 

promises  of  its  triumph.  Try  to  organize  Chris- 
tianity within  one  line  of  agencies,  under  the 
patronage  of  earthly  power,  and  you  kill  it,  or 
corrupt  it.  Unharness  it,  —  let  it  work  free  as 
an  elemental  force  —  the  spirit  that  bloweth 
where  it  listeth,  —  and  you  have  the  leaven  in  the 
meal,  with  its  prophecy  of  quickening  for  the 
whole  lump.  And  when,  at  last,  by  its  secret 
agency  through  invisible  veins,  and  in  impalpable 
ways,  —  when,  far  on  in  a  century  whose  distance 
we  cannot  calculate  as  yet,  the  spirit  of  the  Gospel 
shall  have  poured  itself  through  the  trunk  and  in 
all  the  boughs  of  humanity,  sending  justice  as 
the  organic  fibre,  and  charity  as  the  sweet  juice, 
from  the  lowest  root  to  the  topmost  leaf  of  society, 
then  will  the  hope  of  the  world  be  fulfilled ;  then 
will  the  scheme  over  which  Hildebrand  of  Cluny 
mused  and  prayed  be  realized  in  a  form  higher 
than  he  or  his  stormy  age  could  have  conceived  ; 
for  then  shall  the  promise  and  prophecy  of  Hil- 
debrand's  Master,  the  true  Lord  of  the  church,  be 
completed  in  history,  and  the  mustard-seed  appear 
in  the  developed  tree,  where  the  birds  come  to 
lodge  and  sing  with  joy. 


VI. 

MUSIC, 

I  HAVE  thought,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  that  I 
could  not  more  fitly  discharge  the  duty  with 
which  your  committee  have  honored  me,  than  by 
bringing  to  you  a  brief  address  upon  music. 

I  must  throw  myself  at  once  upon  your  indul- 
gence as  critics,  by  confessing  that,  in  the  great 
temple  of  harmony,  my  worship  is  offered  in  the 
court  of  the  Gentiles.  Yet  it  is  not  without  the 
profoundest  reverence  towards  the  inner  enclosures 
that  guard  the  Holy  of  Holies,  nor  without  the 
most  burning  desire  to  be  a  "  Hebrew  of  the  He- 
brews," in  order  to  gain  the  privilege  of  penetrat- 
ing to  the  central  recess,  and  bowing  at  the  most 
sacred  shrine. 

If  I  should  acknowledge  to  you  in  advance  that 
I  do  not  practically  know  a  note  of  music,  it  will 
not  be  the  first  time,  perhaps  you  will  think,  that 
a  clergyman  has  ventured  dogmatically  upon  top- 
ics which  he  has  not  mastered,  though  perhaps 
you  may  be  inclined  to  give  me  credit  for  an  hon- 
esty in  confession  that  is  somewhat  rare. 

A  friend  of  mine  is  fond  of  telling  the  story  of  a 


232  Music. 

minister  who  preached  a  thrilling  discourse  under 
three  heads,  which  he  had  thus  arranged  :  "  Un- 
der the  first  head,  I  shall  speak  of  matters,  breth- 
ren, with  which  we  are  all  acquainted  ;  under  the 
second  head,  of  those  parts  of  the  subject  of  which 
I  know  something,  and  you  are  ignorant ;  under 
the  third  head,  of  matters  about  which  we  none 
of  us  know  anything  at  all."  And  they  say  that 
he  was  most  interesting  and  eloquent  under  the 
third  head. 

And  yet  it  seems  to  me  that  there  is  room  for 
a  man,  who  comes  under  the  third  head  so  far  as 
the  science  of  harmony  is  concerned,  to  speak 
without  arrogance  and  assumption,  in  a  literary 
way,  of  music  as  a  force,  an  advantage,  a  privilege, 
and  a  joy,  — just  as  a  man  may  describe  his  de- 
light in  landscape,  and  enlarge  upon  the  pleasures 
of  a  refined  and  sensitive  taste  for  natural  beauty, 
who  knows  nothing  of  the  science  of  the  sun-ray, 
or  the  chemistry  of  grass,  or  the  subtle  magic  by 
which  the  evening  symphony  of  color  is  executed 
upon  the  hills. 

There  are  two  prominent  channels  of  commu- 
nication with  the  outward  world,  —  the  eye  and  the 
ear.  Their  mysteries  of  structure,  action,  and 
office  are  about  equally  marvellous. 

They  are  both  made  to  respond  to  vibrations. 
The  first  catches  and  measures  the  pulses  of  that 
wondrous  ether,  immeasurably  more  delicate  than 
our  atmosphere,  whose  shaking  it  is  that  produces 
light.  The  other  detects  and  interprets  the  vibra- 


Music.  233 

tions  that  travel  to  the  mind  as  sound.  The  founda- 
tion of  all  art  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  two  eyes  are  a 
stereoscope.  So  far  as  the  senses  are  concerned, 
things  are  shown  to  us  double  and  upside  down  ; 
the  mind  sees  them  single  and  right  side  up.  So 
two  waves  of  vibration  break  through  our  ears 
upon  the  brain  ;  yet  they  fall  in  perfect  time 
and  are  reported  as  one  sound  to  the  spirit  that 
rides  thus  its  double  set  of  senses  through  the 
marvels  of  the  world. 

One  of  the  striking  wonders  connected  with  the 
science  of  vision  is  the  power  which  the  eye  has 
of  seeing  several  colors  in  the  landscape  or  a  pic- 
ture and  receiving  one  impression  of  symmetry  and 
beauty.  Each  hue  is  caused  by  a  certain  fixed 
number  of  vibrations  upon  the  eye,  of  inconceivable 
swiftness.  To  get  the  sensation  of  redness  the 
retina  must  be  affected  a  certain  number  of  mil- 
lions of  times  in  a  second.  A  violet  ray,  or  a  yel- 
low one,  affects  the  retina  a  different  number  of 
millions  of  times  in  a  second.  And  therefore  to  en- 
joy a  glorious  view  in  nature,  or  a  triumph  of  art  on 
canvas,  where  blue  and  gold  and  purple  are  mi»- 
gled,  the  eye  must  be  played  upon  incessantly  by 
different  sets  of  vibrations ,  and  yet  be  quick 
enough  in  its  reports  to  hold  the  colors  distinct 
for  the  inspection  and  enjoyment  of  the  mind. 

A  kindred  marvel  is  connected  with  the  ear. 
Each  object  in  nature  is  endowed  with  a  peculiar 
power  of  influencing  the  air  by  vibrations.  The 
ear  is  delicate  enough  in  its  sensibility  to  distin- 


234  Music. 

guish  this  whole  gamut  of  the  voices  of  things ; 
and  when  fifty  different  instruments,  or  several 
stops  in  a  leviathan  organ,  are  pouring  sheets  of 
braided  vibrations  through  its  narrow  tunnel  upon 
its  drum,  it  is  not  overpowered,  but  analyzes  them, 
trembles  to  the  most  subtile  pulsations  that  thrill 
through  the  surges  of  tone,  detects  whether  the 
instruments  or  pipes  are  properly  balanced  and 
combined,  and  enables  the  mind  to  discern  the 
grade  of  the  sentiment  and  the  degrees  of  genius 
that  dispose  and  vitalize  all.  We  are  sometimes 
asked  to  admire  the  power  of  Caesar,  who  could 
dictate  to  six  scribes  at  once.  In  the  cultured 
musical  ear  listening  to  a  symphony,  we  have  the 
phenomenon  of  some  threescore  reporters  talk- 
ing at  once  to  an  inward  Caesar,  who  yet  rapidly 
combines  their  incessant  speech  into  orderly  in- 
formation, and  is  free  to  respond  also  with  his 
imagination  and  heart  to  the  quality  —  inspiring, 
pathetic,  or  amusing  —  of  the  news  they  bring. 

The  eye  is  the  channel  of  more  direct  intro- 
duction to  the  intellect;  the  ear-  is  the  broad 
highway  to  the  heart  of  man.  It  is  a  suggestive 
fact  in  the  pathology  of  afflictions,  that  total 
blindness  tends  rather  to  refine  the  character 
and  make  the  life  more  spiritual.  It  sharpens 
the  other  senses,  and  makes  them  atone  in  some 
degree  for  the  loss  of  light.  Total  deafness  tends, 
on  the  contrary,  to  harden  the  nature,  to  make  it 
suspicious,  and  rather  to  impair  than  increase  the 
energy  of  the  sister  senses.  This  is  the  tendency, 


Music.  235 

not  always  the  result,  for  inward  sweetness  and 
nobleness  will  often  counteract  and  conquer  the 
drift  of  obstacles  and  infirmities. 

But  in  this  tendency  do  we  not  find  a  striking 
testimony  to  the  value  of  music  ?  We  can  spare  the 
eye  better  than  the  ear  in  education.  Sound  is 
closer  to  the  soul  as  a  stimulating  influence  than 
light  and  color.  The  eye  is  the  gateway  to  the  intel- 
lect ;  the  ear  is  the  avenue  to  the  sentiments  that 
are  the  glory  of  our  nature.  There  could  be  a 
heaven  without  light,  but  not  without  song,  not 
without  love  and  praise.  The  cherubim  may  have 
the  keener  eyes  ;  but  the  seraphim,  no  doubt,  have 
the  sweeter  voices  and  the  more  delicate  ear. 

In  an  article  contributed  several  years  ago  to 
an  English  review  by  a  living  essayist,  Reason 
and  Faith  were  represented  in  a  charming  alle- 
gory as  two  sisters  who  had  each  been  visited 
with  a  sad  affliction  from  birth.  Reason  was 
deaf,  Faith  was  blind.  So  they  joined  hands  for 
their  perpetual  journeyings  over  the  globe,  where 
day  and  night  fall  alternate.  By  day  the  eyes  of 
Reason  were  the  guide  of  Faith  ;  by  night  the 
ear  of  Faith  was  the  guide  of  Reason. 

The  holiest  influences  from  the  eternal  world 
are  always  figured  to  us  as  voices,  not  as  visions. 
Whispers  come,  but  spirits  are  not  shown.  When 
Paul  speaks  of  having  been  caught  up  to  the 
third  heaven  he  does  not  allude  to  any  sights,  but 
to  "  unspeakable  words  "  which  he  heard,  that  "  it 
is  not  lawful  for  a  man  to  utter."  And  in  the 


236  Music. 

Scripture  the  Holy  Spirit  is  figured  as  the  wind, 
parent  of  music.  What  statement  of  music, 
either,  of  its  mystery  and  spirituality,  is  more 
suggestive  than  the  words  of  the  New  Testament, 
which  were  first  applied  half  to  the  Divine  Spirit, 
and  half  to  the  moving  air  which  is  its  symbol : 
"  Thou  nearest  the  sound  thereof,  but  canst  not 
tell  whence  it  cometh,  nor  whither  it  goeth  "  ! 

One  of  the  richest  chapters  of  natural  religion, 
showing  how  the  outward  world  has  been  created 
to  be  the  servant  of  man  and  express  his  quality, 
might  be  drawn  from  the  power  of  musical  ex- 
pression hidden  in  things  and  ready  to  be  com- 
bined by  genius.  The  alphabet  of  the  musician 
is  far  richer  than  the  alphabet  of  literature  ;  for 
the  notes  which  he  writes  have  different  qualities 
and  meanings,  as  they  are  struck  from  or  uttered 
through  the  different  substances  which  he  im- 
presses into  his  service  to  speak  them.  And  the 
progress  of  musical  science  has  been  immensely 
aided  by  the  enlargement  of  the  vocabulary  of 
things,  —  in  finding  out,  as  one  has  said,  how 
"  every  known  substance,  wood,  shell,  horn,  glass, 
copper,  iron,  steel,  brass,  silver,  strings,  skins, 
pasteboard,  and  even  india-rubber,  wait  to  be 
voices  of  feeling,  and  sing  the  passions  of  the 
human  spirit." 

You  know  how  charmingly  the  Autocrat  of  the 
Breakfast-table  has  written  about  the  ripening  of 
a  violin.  "  There  are  no  less  than  fifty-eight  dif- 
ferent pieces  in  a  violin.  These  pieces  are  strangers 


Music.  237 

to  each  other,  and  it  takes  a  century,  more  or  less, 
to  make  them  thoroughly  acquainted.  At  last 
they  learn  to  vibrate  in  harmony,  and  the  instru- 
ment becomes  an  organic  whole  as  if  it  were  a 
great  seed-capsule,  that  had  grown  from  a  garden 
bed  in  Cremona  or  elsewhere.  The  wood  is 
juicy  and  full  of  sap  for  fifty  years  or  so,  but  at 
the  end  of  fifty  or  a  hundred  more  gets  tolerably 
dry  and  comparatively  resonant."  Now  these 
fifty-eight  pieces  that  thus  combine  to  form  the 
most  princely  instrument  are  types  or  suggestions 
of  how  all  matter  is  toned  and  tempered  to  start 
vibrations  with  various  qualities  in  order  to  en- 
large the  compass  of  expression  for  genius,  and 
the  resources  of  social  instruction  and  joy. 

And,  still  further,  the  delicacy  with  which  mat- 
ter is  attuned  to  respond  to  and  express  the  nicest 
touch  or  impulse  of  genius  in  the  playing  of 
music,  deserves  prominent  place  in  any  treatise 
of  natural  religion  that  would  show  how  things 
have  been  created  to  express  Infinite  genius,  and 
for  the  service  and  training  of  man.  Sound 
travels  eleven  hundred  and  thirty  feet  a  second ; 
and  the  vibrations  from  any  instrument  a  per- 
former is  playing  will  convey,  not  only  the  loud- 
ness  or  softness,  the  precision  and  swell  of  the 
tones,  but  also  how  much  the  inmost  quality  of 
the  man  as  well  as  his  fingers,  or  his  breath,  is 
involved  in  his  work ;  whether  his  intellect  is 
chiefly  engaged,  and  how  much  he  has  and  what 
is  the  grade  of  it ;  or  whether  his  sentiments  are 


238  Music. 

uppermost,  and  what  is  their  level  fineness  and 
intensity. 

If  we  were  to  attempt  an  appraisal  and  alloca- 
tion of  music  in  the  hierarchy  of  Arts,  we  must 
give  it  the  credit  of  being  the  greatest  in  the  line 
of  pure  creativeness.  Other  arts  are  in  a  large 
degree  copies  or  selections. 

A  great  landscape  is  a  transcript  from  an  actual 
picture  by  the  Almighty,  and  a  man  here  comes 
into  direct  competition  with  the  Infinite  genius. 
Noble  sculptures  are  either  reproduced,  or  culled 
from  living  symmetries.  There  have  been  faces 
in  flesh  and  blood  as  noble  as  the  Apollo,  the 
Clytie,  or  the  Venus  of  Milo.  Grand  historic 
paintings  are  drawn  from  described  scenes. 
Some  of  the  richest  conceptions  of  architecture 
have  been  borrowed  from  the  arching  boughs  of 
elms  ;  from  snow  scrolls ;  from  the  interblended 
spring  verdure  of  pine  groves  far  up  above  their 
stately  trunks;  from  vine-embroideries,  from  rock- 
spires  and  cones,  and  buttresses  of  mountains,  and 
from  the  oversweeping  dome  of  the  sky. 

But  music  is  a  pure  creation.  It  is  not  a  thing, 
and  it  is  not  a  copy.  There  are  no  hymns,  no 
choruses,  no  symphonies  in  nature.  What  we 
call  the  music  of  nature  is  in  the  rough.  It  is  not 
organized  ;  it  is  thrown  out  in  masses.  In  the 
voluble  melody  of  birds,  in  the  voice  of  cataracts, 
in  the  sweep  of  storms,  and  the  wrestle  of  winds 
with  the  leaves  of  a  wilderness,  there  are  only 
notes,  or  simple  chords  to  suggest  harmonies  that 


Music.  239 

are  not  realized.     Mere  imitative  music  is  of  a 
low  rank,  and  always  wears  a  charlatan  character. 

Perhaps  there  is  a  music  of  the  spheres,  but  we 
can  only  imagine  it,  we  know  nothing  of  it.  I 
have  sometimes  thought  that  if  a  blind  spirit 
could  be  supported  in  space  so  as  to  hear,  as  this 
globe  rolled  by  him,  the  notes  that  are  borne  on 
it,  —  the  myriad-voiced  melody  of  birds,  the  sweep- 
ing of  winds  over  all  the  zones,  and  the  sheets  of 
sound,  now  sombre,  now  cheerful,  —  they  waken 
from  the  forests  which  they  stir,  —  the  low,  lisping 
penitence  of  the  peaceful  sea,  and,  through  all, 
the  thunderous  mellow  bass  of  the  stirred  ocean, 
beating  on  a  thousand  leagues  of  rock,  —  that  spirit 
might  imagine  it  was  a  mighty  organ  rolling  by, 
touched  on  every  key,  alive  in  every  stop,  and 
aroused  by  every  pedal  to  the  praise  of  God. 

But  we  can  only  conjecture  what  the  blended 
voices  of  this  planet  may  be  when  heard  as  a 
whole.  In  the  music  of  nature,  so  far  as  we  hear 
it  in  detail,  no  idea  is  worked  into  and  struggles 
through  even  its  vast  vibrations.  And  it  is  only 
when  a  mighty  thought  or  sentiment  rolls  through 
waves  of  sound,  combining  them  so  that  they  co- 
operate on  our  heart  and  mind,  that  pure  sublimity 
begins.  All  else  that  we  call  sublimity  is  only  a 
surprise  of  the  senses.  ! 

Not  a  great  many  weeks  ago  I  stood  on  the 
summit  of  the  White  Mountain  ridge  that  over- 
looks New  England,  and  heard  the  north-wind 
scream  and  roar.  And  I  thought,  what  if  this 


240  Music. 

power  could  be  made  articulate, — what  if  it  could 
be  poured  as  a  musical  force  through  some  colos- 
sal organ  that  a  master  genius  might  utter  with  it 
his  sentiment  of  the  night  and  mountain  glory, 
and  God  the  ruler  of  infinite  space  !  What  if  it 
could  roll  over  New  England  thus,  instead  of  its 
fierce  monotone,  an  accompaniment,  such  as  a 
religious  master  would  conceive,  to  the  seventy- 
seventh  Psalm  :  "  The  voice  of  thy  thunder  is  in 
the  heaven :  thy  lightnings  lightened  the  world  ; 
the  earth  trembled  and  shook.  Thy  way  is  in 
the  sea,  and  thy  path  in  the  great  waters,  and  thy 
footsteps  are  not  known  !  " 

Nature  in  her  music  seems  to  strive  simply  to 
set  us  the  example  of  pure  tone,  smooth  swell  in 
volume,  and  delicate  cadence  and  vanish.  Lis- 
ten to  the  elocution  of  the  sea  as  it  talks  with  the 
shore,  and  find  how  mellow,  how  utterly  purged 
of  all  coarseness  the  serried  thunder  of  its  ground 
swell  is,  and  how  gentle  the  lisp  of  its  last  ripple 
that  runs  up  a  mile,  perhaps,  in  length,  like  an 
army  of  little  white  mice  nibbling  the  sand  as  they 
advance.  No  wonder  that  Demosthenes  spent  so 
much  time  by  the  sea-shore,  "  filling  his  mouth," 
as  Mrs.  Parti ngton  said,  "  with  paving-stones,  that 
he  might  learn  to  be  an  oratorio."  He  was  try- 
ing possibly  to  catch  the  secret  of  volume  and 
tenderness  in  sound.  Hear  the  melancholy  cres- 
cendo of  a  gust  through  a  brotherhood  of  pines,  and 
with  what  exquisite  art  of  gradation  it  sighs  away 
into  calm  !  Hark,  in  the  summer  to  the  sweet 


Music.  241 

dactyls  of  the  Peabody-bird,  the  Canada  sweet- 
whistler  in  the  mountain  valleys,  and  admire  the 
smoothness  of  that  high  soprano,  and  how  it  slides 
and  tapers  into  silence  like  the  polished  sting  of 
the  bee,  in  which  the  microscope  can  find  no  rag- 
gedness  or  flaw ! 

The  most  valuable  lessons  in  the  management 
of  sound  we  learn  from  Nature.  And  as  to  purity 
of  tone,  we  must  stand  reverent,  in  the  religious 
sense,  before  what  she  teaches  us.  For  in  this, 
as  in  the  clearness  of  clouds  and  the  transpar- 
ency of  air  and  the  blaze  of  the  sea-foam  and  the 
sparkle  of  moving  rivers,  she  suggests  to  us  the 
purity  and  holiness  of  God. 

A  great  religious  writer  of  our  country,  now  liv- 
ing, has  said,  in  a  passage  which  I  think  stands 
on  the  higher  level  of  American  literature :  "  In 
the  lofty  passes  of  the  Alps  I  heard  a  music  over- 
head from  God's  cloudy  orchestra,  the  giant  peaks 
of  rock  and  ice,  curtained  in  by  the  driving  mist, 
and  only  dimly  visible,  athwart  the  sky,  through 
its  folds,  such  as  mocks  all  sounds  our  lower 
worlds  "of  art  can  ever  hope  to  raise.  I  stood  (ex- 
cuse the  simplicity),  calling  to  them  in  the  loudest 
shouts  I  could  raise,  even  till  my  power  was  spent, 
and  listening  in  compulsory  trance  to  their  reply. 
I  heard  them  roll  it  up  through  their  cloudy  worlds 
of  snow,  sifting  out  the  harsh  qualities  that  were 
tearing  in  it  as  demon  screams  of  sin,  holding  on 
upon  it  as  if  it  were  a  hymn  they  were  singing  to 
the  ear  of  the  great  Creator,  and*  sending  it  round 
ii  p 


242  Music. 

and  round  in  long  reduplications  of  sweetness, 
minute  after  minute,  till  finally  receding  and  ris- 
ing, it  trembled,  as  it  were,  among  the  quick  grat- 
ulations  of  angels,  and  fell  into  the  silence  of 
the  pure  empyrean.  I  had  never  any  conception 
before  of  what  is  meant  by  quality  in  sound. 
There  was  more  power  upon  the  soul  in  one  of 
those  simple  notes  than  I  ever  expect  to  feel  from 
anything  called  music  below,  or  ever  can  feel  till 
I  hear  them  again  in  the  choirs  of  the  angelic 
world  !  I  had  never  such  a  sense  of  purity,  or  of 
what  a  simple  sound  may  tell  of  purity,  by  its  own 
pure  quality.  And  I  can  truly  affirm  that  the 
experience  of  that  hour  has  consciously  made  me 
better  able  to  think  of  God  ever  since,  —  better 
able  to  worship," 

When  we  say  that  music  is  a  pure  and  uncopied 
creation,  we  mean  that  in  nature  there  is  no  com- 
bination of  great  sentiment  and  the  developing 
of  an  idea  or  emotion  in  sound.  Man  is  the  organ 
through  which  the  Infinite  Spirit  creates  this  ad- 
dition to  the  treasury  of  beauty  and  the  resources 
of  life. 

And  it  seems  to  me  that  the  method  of  a  musical 
composer  of  the  first  rank  in  producing  his  work 
is  the  most  subtile  of  all  the  processes  of  genius, 
and  nearest  in  kindred  with  the  movements  of  the 
Creative  Intelligence.  A  sculptor  slowly  moulds 
from  his  thoughts  into  clay  that  is  not  perfectly 
ductile,  and  then  translates  from  clay  into  more 
stubborn  stone.  -  The  painter  finds  it  often  impos- 


Music-  243 

sible  to  clothe  in  color  the  idea  which  his  sketch 
recalls.  The  poet  often  finds  that  he  cannot 
report  in  language  the  fire  and  melody  that  flash 
through  his  imagination.  But  with  the  musical 
artist,  the  thought  and  the  arrest  of  it  are  instan- 
taneous. The  grandest  inspirations  of  great  com- 
posers are  caught  for  all  generations,  without  dis- 
tortion or  deflection  from  their  first  majesty  and 
grace.  The  sign  that  entraps  them,  the  bars  that 
hold  them,  show  them  to  us  just  as  they  swept  into 
the  atmosphere  of  their  genius  from  the  breath  of 
God! 

So  far  as  dignity  and  subtlety  of  genius  are 
concerned  I  should  rather  have  been  Mozart  than 
Shakespeare.  I  know  not  how  the  conception  of 
Hamlet,  or  Lear,  or  Othello  dawned  and  swelled 
on  the  great  dramatist's  vision  until  it  was  wrought 
out  in  rhythmic  and  stately  fact.  But  the  process 
could  hardly  have  been  so  mystical,  so  supernat- 
ural, so  akin  to  the  Divine  calling  of  the  world 
from  nothing  in  a  moment,  as  Mozart's  creation, 
according  to  his  own  account,  of  a  grand  pas- 
sage in  a  symphony  or  an  opera.  It  did  not 
come  to  him  in  a  thin  stream  of  melody,  or  in  a 
theme  which  he  expanded  by  a  conscious  mental 
effort,  arranging  it  for  various  instruments  and 
composing  it  in  harmony  ;  but  it  burst  full-voiced, 
as  it  were,  from  an  ideal  orchestra  or  a  celestial 
chorus  into  his  imagination,  from  which  it  was 
only  copied  into  a  mortal  score.  It  was  as  if  a 
whole  act  of  "Hamlet "  or  "King  John,"  with  all 


244  Music. 

its  characters,  interplay  of  passions,  words  and 
rhythm,  should  have  streamed  in  one  condensed 
flash  into  Shakespeare's  mind,  ready  to  be  clothed 
in  type,  and  to  remain  forever  in  the  uppermost 
range  of  the  creations  of  the  human  intellect. 

It  is  only  from  instances  like  this,  which  the 
sphere  of  music  furnishes  more  than  any  other 
region  of  art,  that  we  can  catch  a  hint  of  the 
movements  of  Infinite  thoughts  from  which  the 
whole  order  of  nature  has  issued,  and  is  sustained 
every  moment  as  a  starry  anthem  in  space. 

Whenever  it  is  possible,  I  go  to  the  Music 
Hall,  in  Boston,  to  enjoy  the  feasts  of  instrumental 
harmony,  or  the  oratorios  that  ennoble  many  of 
our  winter  evenings. 

On  the  platform,  towering  over  the  singers  or 
musicians,  is  the  bronze  statue  of  Beethoven,  a 
noble  monument  of  the  genius  of  Crawford,  rep- 
resenting the  master  with  his  head  bent,  and  a 
music  sheet  in  one  hand,  upon  which  the  other 
had  just  written  the  first  notes  of  his  choral  hymn 
of  joy.  Sometimes  I  find  myself  led  off  from  the 
harmony  in  thinking  of  the  last  appearance  of 
that  great  man  at  a  German  festival  in  his  honor, 
when  the  Ninth  Symphony,  closing  with  that  sub- 
lime chorus,  was  performed.  He  was  almost  as 
deaf  amid  its  grandeurs  as  his  bronze  statue  in 
Boston  is  to  the  surges  of  sound  that  swell  around 
it.  He  could  not  hear  the  tumultuous  applause 
of  the  crowded  theatre  at  its  close. 

A  friend  touched  him  as  he  stood  on  the  stage 


Music.  245 

with  his  back  to  the  audience,  and  made  signs  that 
he  should  turn  round  and  see  the  enthusiasm  of 
the  thousands  whom  his  music  had  thrilled.  He 
turned  with  a  listless  face,  which  at  once  struck 
the  multitude  with  a  fresh  consciousness  of  his 
affliction.  And  then  we  are  told  that  as  the  flood- 
gates of  pleasure,  compassion,  and  sympathy  were 
opened,  there  followed  a  volcanic  explosion  of 
applause,  which  seemed  as  if  it  would  never  end, 
and  which  the  master  could  not  fail  to  hear  as 
well  as  see. 

And  recalling  that  scene  the  miracle  of  genius 
seems  the  more  fathomless.  This  man's  most 
original  and  wonderful  creations  were  produced 
when  his  earthly  ear  had  been  almost  paralyzed, 
and  it  was  painful  to  hear  him  attempt  to  play 
the  piano.  It  was  in  this  state  that,  out  of  pulsa- 
tions borne  to  the  ear  of  his  soul,  he  wrought  out 
the  architecture  of  harmony.  And  I  can  scarcely 
ever  look  at  that  statue  without  recalling  those 
words  which  were  first  addressed  to  it  when  it 
was  received  into  that  hall,  —  words  that  seem  to 
me  most  vividly  to  describe  Beethoven's  music  :  — 

"  What  a  vast,  majestic  structure  thou  hast  builded  out  of  sound, 
With  its  high  peak  piercing  heaven,  and  its  base  deep  under 

ground : 

Vague  as  air,  yet  firm  and  real  to  the  spiritual  eye, 
Seamed  with  fire  its  cloudy  bastions  far  away  uplifted  lie, 
Like  those  sullen  shapes  of  thunder  we  behold  at  close  of  day, 
Piled  upon  the  far  horizon  where  the  jagged  lightnings  play. 
Awful  voices,  as  from  Hades,  thrill  us,  growling  from  its  heart ; 
Sudden  splendors  blaze  from  out  it,  cleaving  its  black  walls 
apart ; 


246  Music. 

White-winged  birds  dart  forth  and  vanish,  singing  as  they  pass 

from  sight, 

Till  at  last  it  lifts,  and  'neath  it  shows  a  field  of  amber  light, 
Where  some  single  star  is  shining,  throbbing  like  a  new-born  thing, 
And  the  earth,  all   drenched  in  splendor,  lets  its  happy  voices 

sing." 

And  reflecting  thus  upon  the  endowment  which 
Beethoven's  genius  has  left  to  civilization,  and  the 
sad  privations  of  his  own  nature  here,  I  love  to 
think  that  the  scene  in  that  German  theatre  is  a 
feeble  symbol  of  the  thrill  which  his  spirit  feels 
in  surveying  the  vast  and  purifying  joy  that  sweeps 
through  tens  of  thousands  of  souls  on  this  planet 
every  year  in  response  to  those  creations  which, 
I  believe,  give  the  heart  that  appreciates  them  a 
fore- feeling  of  the  intellectual  rapture  of  heaven. 

The  greatest  privilege  of  a  city  life  seems  to  me 
to  be  its  musical  opportunities.  In  the  cultivated 
or  mountainous  country  a  banquet  is  provided  for 
the  eye.  And  there,  too,  we  can  have  intellectual 
pleasures,  —  communion  through  books  with  the 
best  minds,  thoughts,  and  experiences  of  our  own 
age  and  of  history.  The  city  alone  can  give  us 
a  chorus,  a  sublime  organ,  and  an  orchestra.  In 
these  some  of  the  rich  and  manifest  advances  of 
modern  over  ancient  civilization  are  summed  up. 

If  an  old  Greek  should  return  to  us,  we  could 
show  him  no  statuary  equal  to  that  with  which 
Athens  and  Corinth  were  crowded.  We  could 
point  out  to  him  no  architecture  of  a  grade  up  to 
the  average  of  the  temples  that  crowned  the  hills, 
or  shadowed  the  squares  in  which  Sophocles  or 


Music.  247 

Plato  once  walked.  But  take  him  into  an  opera- 
house  or  into  a  great  concert-hall  to  hear  the  work 
of  a  modern  master,  and  we  could  introduce  him 
into  an  advance  over  everything  that  the  age  of 
Plato  or  of  Augustus  knew  as  music,  no  less 
remarkable  than  the  progress  of  our  practical 
science  beyond  the  attainments  of  the  classic 
times. 

The  name  of  Handel  carries  us  on  to  another 
state.  The  highest  music  is  religious.  And 
in  speaking  of  orchestra,  organ,  and  chorus  as 
supplying  the  supreme  civilized  privilege  of  the 
city,  let  me  go  further  and  express  my  belief  that 
the  greatest  fortune  which  can  befall  a  person  in 
the  line  of  art  is  —  more  than  seeing  Rubens's  pic- 
ture of  the  Descent  from  the  Cross,  or  Titian's 
Assumption,  or  Da  Vinci's  Last  Supper,  or  Raf- 
faelle's  Transfiguration,  or  the  Dresden  Madonna 
—  to  hear  Handel's  Messiah,  when  it  is  given  with 
a  competent  combination  of  power  and  gifts. 

We  have  the  profoundest  and  most  laden  elo- 
quence of  the  Bible  trembling  of  itself  with  the 
most  solemn  emotions  which  God's  law  and  grace 
can  arouse.  We  have  the  feeling  which  these 
words,  and  the  immeasurable  facts  Jhey  stand  for, 
wakened  in  a  great  soul  who  entered  by  sympathy 
into  the  deepest  evangelical  sentiment  of  Christen- 
dom, and  was  competent  to  enshrine  it  in  music. 
We  have  the  instruments  —  organ,  and  orchestra, 
the  endowment  of  an  advanced  civilization  —  to 
give  the  body  and  shading  of  the  master's  idea. 


248  Music. 

We  have  the  accomplished  singers  to  render  air 
or  trio  or  quartette,  and  the  fourfold  volume  of 
the  chorus  to  give  the  ground-swell,  swing,  and 
majesty  to  the  gathering  hallelujahs. 

I  always  wonder  when  I  hear  that  oratorio  that 
in  every  city  a  grand  cathedral  service  is  not  made 
out  of  it,  or  out  of  selections  from  it,  once  a  month, 
—  certainly  every  Christmas,  —  that  the  promise 
of  Christ,  and  the  blessedness  of  his  grace,  and 
the  beneficence  of  his  reign,  and  the  glory  of  his 
triumph  may  have  fit  interpretation  in  words  and 
in  ways  that  oversweep  the  petty  divisions  of  cate- 
chisms and  creeds. 

It  might,  perhaps,  be  profitable  and  pleasant,  if 
we  had  time  for  it,  to  speak  of  music  as  a  method 
of  expression,  and  of  the  manifest  differences  of 
style  among  the  great  masters.  It  may  be  ques- 
tioned whether  a  very  critical  ear,  sensitive  to  the 
slightest  faults  of  execution,  is  a  blessing.  I  have 
one  or  two  friends  who  suffer  so  much  exquisite 
misery  in  the  course  of  a  year  from  this  cause,  that 
I  have  sometimes  been  tempted  to  adopt  the  phi- 
losophy of  the  friends  of  Job,  and  believe  that 
they  are  great  sinners  in  their  hearts,  and  are  vis- 
ited in  this  way  by  the  whip  of  the  Almighty,  —  a 
jangling  cat-o'-nine-tail  of  sound.  It  would  be, 
perhaps,  better,  so  far  as  happiness  is  concerned, 
instead  of  suffering  from  this  gout  of  the  auditory 
nerve,  to  take  the  ear  of  the  man  who  was  asked 
if  he  was  a  judge  of  music,  and  confessed  that  he 


Music.  249 

knew  two  tunes  from  all  others,  Yankee  Doodle 
and  Old  Hundred,  but  could  never  be  entirely 
sure  which  was  which.  There  is  no  art  in  which 
there  is  such  a  range  of  capacity  of  appreciation 
among  intelligent  persons.  A  Chinaman  of  con- 
siderable culture  delights  in  a  gong.  A  Turkish 
plenipotentiary,  invited  to  an  instrumental  concert 
in  Europe,  where  noble  music  was  played,  being 
asked  which  piece  he  preferred,  said  that  he 
thought  the  first  one  was  by  far  the  most  inter- 
esting. It  happened  that  what  he  referred  to  was 
the  introductory  tuning  and  scraping  of  the  in- 
struments. 

The  sensitive  ear  for  mere  niceties  of  execution 
in  detail  may  not  be  worth  desiring,  but  there  is 
no  worthier  exercise  of  mind  and  culture  of  taste 
than  the  study  of  the  general  style,  flavor,  atmos- 
phere, and  level  of  genius  in  a  prominent  com- 
poser and  master.  The  pleasure  of  feeling  the 
central  effluence  from  the  soul  of  a  great  musical 
genius  streaming  out  of  a  work  as  a  whole  —  of 
being  borne  by  it,  as  it  were,  into  the  climate 
of  his  spirit  —  is  granted  to,  or  may  be  gained  by 
those  who  are  strangers  to  the  technicalities  and 
the  science  of  music  itself. 

The  difference  in  effect  between  a  perfect  poem 
by  Tennyson  and  a  faultless  passage  from  Words- 
worth is  not  the  difference  merely  of  the  senti- 
ments which  the  lines  may  interpret,  or  the  pic- 
tures they  may  draw.  Their  rhythms  are  different ; 
their  melodies  are  unlike  ;  the  landscapes  of  their 


250  Music. 

natures  are  as  diverse  as  the  Bay  of  Naples  and 
a  Scottish  frith.  A  mind  sensitive  to  the  radia- 
tion of  genius  feels  that  there  is  scarcely  a  verse 
in  a  volume  by  one,  which  the  other  could  have 
written.  It  is  so  when  we  turn  from  Carlyle  to 
Emerson.  No  writers  are  so  frequently  compared 
with  each  other,  as  though  one  had  borrowed  from 
the  other.  Yet  there  is  hardly  a  sprig  or  bunch 
of  words  in  any  production  of  one  which  could 
have  grown  on  the  mental  stock  of  the  other  any 
more  than  a  pine  cone  on  an  ash.  They  are  as 
unlike  as  the  scenery  and  breath  of  a  clear  winter 
night,  and  a  thunderous,  savage  summer  noon. 

There  is  the  same  difference,  as  decisively  and 
more  delicately  revealed,  among  musical  masters, 
in  the  aroma  and  color,  the  breadth,  dignity,  and 
elevation,  of  their  works.  It  is  rare  to  hear  a 
passage  from  Mendelssohn  that  seems  to  have 
stayed  long  enough  on  the  tree  and  in  the  sun. 
It  seems  to  have  been  plucked  a  little  hard,  and 
scarcely  ripe  ;  while  every  creative  movement  of 
Mozart's  mind  shook  off  melodies,  juicy,  mellow, 
sweet,  and  blooming  as  peaches,  fit  for  the  palate 
of  an  angel.  And  one  of  the  richest  pleasures 
flowing  from  an  educated  taste  and  continuous 
interest  in  music  comes  from  the  feeling  of  the 
predominant  quality  of  each  master  through  every 
work.  We  learn  how  substantial  music  is,  though 
its  kingdom  is  that  of  the  air,  when  we  find  the 
innermost  quality  of  the  man  permeating  every 
chord  and  cadence  which  he  does  not  steal ;  the 


Music.  251 

sense  of  sublimity  before  the  simple  forces  of 
nature  and  the  holiness  of  God  veined  with  a 
tenderness  as  if  the  Book  of  Ruth  were  set  in  the 
substance  of  the  Pentateuch  that  belonged  to 
Handel ;  the  wild  waywardness  of  Beethoven's 
genius,  sea-like  and  stormy,  heaving  up  from 
troughs  o'f  sullen  shadow  crests  of  melody  to 
flash  in  the  fitful  sun  ;  and  we  see  a  distinct 
quality  imparted  to  every  air,  duet,  and  chorus 
by  the  honeyed  Bellini,  the  weird  Weber,  the  rhe- 
torical, florid  Donizetti,  the  sparkling,  superficial 
Auber,  the  luscious  Rossini,  the  sunny  and  joyous 
Haydn,  or  the  half-spectral,  wholly  delightful  gen- 
ius of  Schubert,  whose  soul  seems  to  have  been 
compacted  of  the  most  poetic,  warm,  and  genial 
moonlight  that  ever  turned  an  earthly  landscape 
into  a  fairy  scene.* 

But,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  it  is  time  to  relieve 
your  overstrained  and  failing  patience.  Such  as- 
sociations as  yours,  diffusing,  feeding,  instituting 

*  The  time  fails  us  to  speak  of  patriotic  music.  The  singers 
of  our  great  struggle  as  yet  are  the  poets.  No  new  and  command- 
ing melody  or  chorus  has  been  created  to  enshrine  the  faith  of  the 
loyal  States  and  the  beneficence  to  humanity  of  our  immense  war. 
When  victory  and  peace  come,  perhaps  the  fitting  ode,  with  the  fit 
wings  of  music,  will  burst  from  the  genius  of  the  nation.  Perhaps 
it  is  well  that,  when  the  emblem  of  our  nationality  shall  be  uplifted 
above  the  cities  and  countries  of  rebellion,  there  shall  be  no  new 
strains  to  salute  the  ears  of  the  recovered  aliens,  but  the  old  rhythm 
of  Yankee  Doodle,  and  the  Star-Spangled  Banner,  and  Hail  Colum- 
bia, with  one  tune  a  little  strange,  perhaps,  of  which,  when  they 
ask  the  name  as  it  shall  be  played  by  Union  bands  in  Charleston 
and  Savannah,  they  shall  be  told  it  is  the  John  Brown  Chorus 
over  the  downfall  of  slavery,  —  u  Glory,  Hallelujah  !  "  (1861.) 


252  Music. 

the  taste  for  music  in  the  community,  organizing 
singers  by  acquaintance,  sympathy,  common  prac- 
tice, emulation,  and  charity,  "  which  is  the  bond 
of  perfectness,"  enrich  our  civilization,  and  supply 
one  of  the  crying  needs  in  the  character  of  our 
country. 

"Topmost  crown   of  ancient  Athens   towered  the  Phidian   Par- 
thenon, 

Upon  freedom's  youthful  forehead,  Art  the  starry  jewel  shone. 
Never  is  a  nation  finished  while  it  wants  the  grace  of  Art,  — 
Use  must  borrow  robes  from  beauty,  life  must  rise  above  the  mart, 
Faith  and  love  are  all  ideal,  speaking  with  a  music  tone, 
And  without  their  touch  of  magic,  labor  is  the  devil's  own." 

There  are  two  universal  languages  that  spread 
civilization  and  ennoble  society.  The  first  is 
mathematics,  the  sign-speech  of  the  intellect. 
There  is  no  Celt  or  Saxon,  no  Jew  or  Greek,  in 
that  tongue.  Whoever  makes  a  statement  or 
clinches  a  discovery  in  it  helps  the  race.  His 
page  can  be  read  by  the  mathematician  in  Arabia 
and  Russia,  though  it  was  written  in  Paris  or  Cin- 
cinnati. Yes,  the  laws  of  form  and  light  and  mo- 
tion are  the  same  through  all  space,  and  Newton's 
demonstration  of  the  law  of  gravity,  and  Laplace's 
"  Mecanique  Celeste,"  and  Young's  "  Treatise  on 
Light "  could  no  doubt  be  understood  by  an  in- 
tellect in  Sirius  or  the  outer  edge  of  the  Milky 
Way.  Music  is  the  universal  language  of  the 
innermost  spiritual  nature.  It  can  be  understood 
in  its  signs  and  its  voices,  by  races  and  by  grades 
of  spirits  that  cannot  understand  each  other's 
speech,  and  that  are  alienated  in  all  other  ways. 


Music.  253 

"  Underneath  its  world-wide  Banyan,  friends  the  gathering  nations 

sit, 
Red  Sioux  and  dreamy  German  dance  and  feast  and  fight  to  it." 

Yes,  and  all  that  we  cultivate  of  its  highest 
spirit  in  its  great  religious  expressions  here  will 
go  with  us  as  preparation  for  eternity.  We  shall 
not  talk  German  probably  in  the  future  world ; 
but  I  do  not  know  why  the  Andante  of  the  Fifth 
Symphony  of  Beethoven  may  not  be  played  in 
heaven.  The  angelic  masters  must  be  inspired 
beyond  our  present  capacity  of  appreciation  if 
they  can  produce  anything  that  will  make  that 
seem  meagre.  We  shall  slough  off,  probably,  our 
English  vocabulary  and  tongue  in  the  grave ;  but 
even  in  the  final  gathering  of  the  redeemed  out 
of  every  nation,  tongue,  and  clime  one  strophe  of 
the  consummate  Anthem  to  the  Lamb  and  through 
him  to  the  Infinite  who  shall  put  all  things  under 
his  feet,  may  be  the  Hallelujah  Chorus  of  the 
Messiah,  contributed  from  this  earth  to  form  part 
of  the  everlasting  language  of  the  skies. 

1858. 


VII. 

EXISTENCE  AND  LIFE. 

I  SHALL  have  the  privilege  of  addressing  you 
on  the  subject  of  Existence  and  Life. 
The  great  object  which  the  Creator  seeks  to 
produce  and  sustain  by  the  economy  of  nature 
is  conscious  life.  The  globe  is  the  bulb  of  which 
life  is  to  be  the  flower.  The  calendar  of  the 
globe  is  not  dotted  by  years  nor  by  ages,  but  by 
advancing  steps  of  life.  The  great  strata,  whose 
formation  we  study  with  a  bewildering  sense  of 
duration,  are  simply  the  dull  dial-plate  on  which 
the  celestial  time  is  marked  by  the  creative  energy 
moving  from  worm  to  mollusk,  from  mollusk  to 
fish,  and  thence  to  reptile,  and  on  to  mammal, 
and  at  last  to  man.  God  does  not  publish  him- 
self by  ages,  but  by  creations.  When  a  new  ten- 
dril is  produced,  or  a  new  sense  appears,  or  a 
higher  type  is  introduced,  or  the  skeleton  flowers 
out  from  a  wing  into  a  forearm,  or  from  a  paw 
into  a  hand,  so  that  wider  control  is  gained  of 
nature,  then  a  new  minute  is  noted  on  the  chro- 
nometer that  keeps  the  time  of  the  Divine  plan. 
It  is  evident  that  the  world  is  provided  as  the 


Existence  and  Life.  255 

basis  for  human  life  ;  and  man  is  broadly  related 
to  nature  by  his  faculties,  — is  put  to  pasture,  we 
may  say,  in  the  universe,  that  its  harvests  may 
pass  up  and  be  transmuted  into  his  experience. 

Have  you  ever  thought  how  the  human  frame 
represents  all  nature?  It  is  a  singular  fact  that 
even  the  proportions  of  sea  and  land  on  the 
surface  of  the  globe  are  repeated  in  the  human 
body,  of  which  three  fourths  are  liquid  and  one 
fourth  dry.  The  bones  of  the  human  body  rep- 
resent the  rocky  skeleton  of  the  globe  ;  the  flesh 
and  skin,  the  soil ;  the  teeth,  the  minerals ;  the 
arteries  and  veins,  the  river  systems  ;  the  hair, 
the  vegetation ;  the  nervous  life,  the  galvanic  and 
magnetic  currents ;  while  the  food,  which  is 
drawn  from  all  nature  —  air,  ocean,  land,  forest, 
and  lake,  tropic  heats  and  polar  cold,  —  for  the 
support  of  the  civilized  constitution,  pictures  the 
fact  that  civilized  life  should  be  a  reproduction 
into  thought  and  feeling  of  all  the  elements  or- 
ganized into  nature. 

It  is,  therefore,  life  considered  in  its  sources, 
the  breadth  and  variety  of  the  supplies  of  it,  — 
life  on  the  side  of  reception,  leaving  out  of  view 
the  expression  and  expenditure  of  it  in  action, 
that  I  purpose  to  treat  and  that  I  invite  you  to 
survey. 

We  must  begin  by  thoroughly  comprehending 
the  distinction  between  existence  and  life.  It  is  a 
great  mistake  to  suppose  that  people  live  to  the 
same  extent,  or  that  they  are  equally  alive,  be- 


256  Existence  and  Life. 

cause  they  equally  exist.  The  idea  of  more  or 
less  of  dignity  or  meanness,  breadth  and  power, 
cannot  be  connected  with  the  word  "  existence." 
Physical  animation,  the  feeling  that  one  is  a  con- 
scious fact  in  the  universe,  determines  that.  Life 
is  a  higher  matter.  Life  consists  in  the  putting 
forth  of  faculties  that  are  sheathed  in  our  exist- 
ence. We  live  by  communion  with  the  substances 
of  the  universe,  and  the  fulness  of  any  life  is 
determined  by  the  number  of  objects  from  which 
a  person  draws  nutriment. 

For  instance,  you  may  hold  in  your  hand  a 
dozen  seeds,  and  you  must  say  of  them  that  they 
equally  exist.  But  you  cannot  decide",  as  you 
look  at  them,  even  though  they  may  be  of  the 
same  size,  the  amount  of  life  of  which  they  are 
capable.  They  are  tiny  possibilities.  Drop  them 
in  the  ground  and  their  life  begins.  Each  pellet 
then  shoots  out  the  latent  forces  of  its  bosom. 
Its  delicate  threads  fasten  on  the  clods  for  foot- 
hold, and  it  pushes  its  way  upwards,  climbs  to 
feed  on  the  sun,  the  sky,  and  the  clouds.  But  if 
one  of  those  seeds  is  that  of  a  fragile  herb,  and 
the  other  of  an  elm,  the  amount  of  life  they  will 
gain  will  be  immensely  unequal,  because  one  has 
vastly  more  capacity  than  the  other  to  draw  in 
from  the  treasuries  of  nature  and  reorganize  it 
into  itself. 

So  any  hundred  infants  are  human  germs  of 
which  the  word  "  existence  "  is  equally  applicable  ; 
but  the  life  they  are  to  experience  and  exhibit 


Existence  and  Life.  257 

will  depend  on  the  number  and  vigor  of  the  fac- 
ulties that  will  strike  down,  reach  wide,  and  tower 
up  into  the  universe  to  import  nourishment  from 
the  stores  of  things. 

Our  physical  life,  which  is  the  basis  and  type  of 
all  other  vitality,  consists  in  incorporating  the  phys- 
ical elements.  The  amount  of  physical  life  is  sim- 
ply the  amount  of  power  we  imbibe  from  air,  elec- 
tric force,  food.  Each  man  is  a  divinely  chartered 
corporation  to  trade  in  the  elements  and  products 
of  the  universe,  and  transform  them  incessantly 
into  bone,  blood,  muscle,  and  strength.  When 
this  process  of  commerce  with  the  riches  of  na- 
ture, of  suction  from  its  substance,  ceases,  —  when 
the  ability  to  gain  or-  renew  power  stops,  the  body 
ceases  to  live.  It  may  maintain  its  existence  a 
while  longer  till  its  old  fund  is  used  up  ;  but  it 
has  begun  to  die. 

The  relation  of  the  body,  thus  endowed  by  all 
space,  to  the  real  life  of  a  human  being,  is  that 
of  the  flower-pot  to  the  plant ;  it  is  to  give  the 
spirit  room  and  shelter  in  the  physical  universe, 
that  it  may  branch  into  the  finer  world  to  bud 
and  bloom.  To  live  for  the  body,  instead  of  by 
and  through  it,  is  therefore  to  abdicate  the  privi- 
lege of  our  colonization  in  the  material  world  at 
the  start. 

Is  it  not,  therefore,  a  dreadful  satire  on  the 
highest  form  of  civilization  that  it  is  continually 
generating  from  its  deeps  thousands  of  beings 
whose  labor  and  wit  must  all  be  expended,  not 

Q 


258  Existence  and  Life. 

in  living,  but  in  continuing  to  exist  ?  Think  of 
the  armies  of  men  and  women  that  must  pledge 
all  their  time,  breath,  and  genius,  if  they  have 
any,  in  "  keeping  body  and  soul  together,"  whom 
it  costs  the  whole  play  of  their  faculties  simply 
"  to  fetch  breath,"  and  then  think  how  wealthy 
and  bountiful  this  universe  is !  The  lungs  of  a 
human  being  are  fed  for  nothing.  If  there  were 
a  thousand  times  as  many  on  the  earth  they 
could  be  supported  as  freely  as  they  are  now. 
It  costs  nothing  to  store  their  nerves  with  electric 
power.  There  is  light  enough  for  as  many  eyes 
as  can  be  crowded  on  the  globe  ;  splendor,  truth, 
and  beauty  enough  for  as  many  minds  as  can  be 
gathered  here ;  mystery  and  inspiration  enough  for 
as  many  souls  as  can  find  foothold  on  the  planet. 
God  provides  inexhaustible  stores  directly  for 
every  faculty  of  man  but  the  stomach.  And  the 
earth  is  opulent  enough  to  feed  myriads  more 
than  are  supported  on  it  now.  But  the  arrange- 
ments for  the  digestive  system  are  left  to  human 
skill  and  organization  ;  and  is  it  any  wonder  that 
schools  of  socialism  are  springing  up  among  us, 
when  this  is  the  only  department  of  human  sus- 
tenance that  is  so  miserably  mismanaged  as  to 
fail ;  when  human  wisdom  has  proved  unable  to 
distribute  labor  over  the  soil  so  as  to  tap  suffi- 
ciently the  exuberant  bounty  of  the  globe,  or 
even  to  organize  the  transfer  of  what  the  earth 
produces  to  the  mouths  of  men,  so  that  food 
shall  be  cheap  enough  to  keep  every  human  crea- 


Existence  and  Life.  259 

ture  in  existence  easily;  when  we  have  books 
in  our  advance  countries  talking  about  an  over- 
stock of  human  beings  ;  and  when  the  awful 
pyramid  of  poverty,  broad-based  with  the  pariahs 
of  heathenism,  shows  in  its  sloping  layers  the 
beggars  of  Italy,  the  half-blind  miners  of  England 
and  her  starving  operatives,  the  rag-pickers  and 
outcasts  of  republican  America,  coming  to  its 
apex  in  the  miseries  of  needlewomen  and  the* 
"Song  of  the  Shirt"? 

Schemes  of  socialism  are  started  by  the  press- 
ure on  the  intellect  of  this  problem,  whether  the 
land  does  not  belong  to  the  race,  just  as  the  at- 
mosphere belongs  to  the  race,  —  whether  man 
does  not  own  it,  and  not  men ;  and  whether  any 
system  of  property  for  the  soil  which  prevents  a 
large  mass  of  the  world  from  getting  a  living,  or 
which  forces  them  to  pawn  all  the  noble  possi- 
bilities of  their  existence  for  a  mere  living,  is 
not  as  transparently. wrong  as  pre-emption-rights 
and  squatter-sovereignty  in  the  air  would  be, — 
were  it  possible,  —  so  that  it  should  be  let  out  to 
the  majority  at  so  much  per  cubic  foot,  or  as  the 
getting  rich  in  acres  of  sunshine  would  be,  which 
a  man  should  hold  in  his  own  right  and  suffer  to 
leak  out  here  and  there  upon  a  house  or  field, 
at  a  fixed  price  per  quart !  It  is  well  to  pene- 
trate to  the  intellectual  roots  of  startling  theories. 
If  it  is  an  open,  debatable  question  whether  the 
land  is  not  an  element  like  atmosphere,  light,  and 
heat,  the  title  to  which  is  vested  in  the  human 


260  Existence  and  Life. 

stomach,  we  must  expect  to  see  project  after 
project  of  social  organization,  till  some  one  is 
found  that  will  distribute  labor  by  perfect  sci- 
ence, and  so  multiply  the  products  of  the  globe 
that  food  will  be  insured  to  every  descendant  of 
Adam,  and  life,  as  something  higher  than  exist- 
ence, be  offered  to  the  lowest  member  of  the 
race. 

When  we  think  that  the  impeachment  of  soci- 
ety has  been  moved  by  the  modern  intellect  be- 
cause it  forces  crowds  of  minds,  hearts,  and  souls 
to  be  mere  satellites  of  the  stomach,  it  is  interest- 
ing to  turn  for  a  moment,  in  passing,  to  the  Epi- 
cureans who  prefer  that  scheme  of  existence,  and 
who  deliberately  live  to  eat,  instead  of  eating  to 
live.  If  a  human  creature,  lifted  above  all  com- 
pulsion to  do  so,  chooses  to  live  for  the  sake  of 
sensations  and  physical  delights,  it  is  an  interest- 
ing question  whether  he  would  experience  any 
conscious  irreparable  loss  if  he  were  turned  into 
a  plant  that  should  have  the  capacity  of  feeling 
diffused  through  it,  —  that  could  taste  the  earth 
by  its  roots,  and  drink  mountain-dew  every  night 
with  its  leaves  !  What  vacancy  would  the  strik- 
ing out  of  brain  and  of  sensibilities  to  the  exquisite 
world  produce  in  natures  of  that  class?  Their 
life  is  really  an  underground  one,  like  that  of 
potatoes,  turnips,  and  beets,  —  where  the  upper 
faculties  are  simply  the  appendage  to  the  lower, 
and  valuable  for  the  juices  they  carry  down  ;  not 
like  the  tree,  where  what  is  underneath  is  impor- 


Existence  and  Life.  261 

tant  for  what  it  sends  up  to  faculties  that  revel  in 
the  light. 

Think  of  laying  open  the  sources  of  a  human 
being's  life  and  finding  that  he  is  built  up  —  the 
interests  and  delights  of  his  mind  as  well  as  his 
body  —  out  of  venison  and  turtle,  so  that  his 
epochs  are  Burgundy  and  salads,  French  pastry 
and  Moselle !  The  Psyche  in  him,  that  should 
burst  into  the  butterfly,  confined  wholly  to  the 
grub  !  What  should  we  say  of  an  engine  which, 
if  the  power  of  taste  could  be  imparted  to  it, 
should  spend  its  existence  in  munching  wood, 
becoming  very  critical  in  the  flavors  of  birch, 
hackmatack,  maple,  and  pine,  filling  its  boilers 
with  alcohol,  feeling  the  fire  as  a  subtle  pleasure 
over  its  steely  nerves,  and  puffing  away  the  steam 
without  doing  any  work,  or  running  its  wheels  for 
any  purpose  but  to  generate  an  appetite  for  the 
coming  meal !  Such  a  machine,  as  a  curiosity, 
would  rebuild  Mr.  Barnum's  fortunes ;  yet  a  little 
insight  shows  us  human  types  of  such,  plentifully 
scattered  over  society  as  the  marvellous  results  of 
civilization ! 

The  distinctively  human  life  begins  when  we 
rise  into  higher  spheres  than  the  physical,  and  ap- 
propriate into  our  own  substance  material  which 
they  offer.  And  so  the  first  thing  to  do  in  order 
to  understand  the  comprehensiveness  of  life,  com- 
pared with  mere  existence,  is  to  widen  our  con- 
ception of  the  realities  in  this  universe  from 
which  it  is  fed.  The  mind  has  a  digestive  sys- 


262  Existence  and  Life. 

tern  for  truth,  and  appropriates  it,  assimilates  it, 
just  as  the  body  assimilates  meal.  The  law  of 
cohesion  is  a  thing  for  the  mind,  just  as  much 
as  a  brick  that  is  ruled  by  it  is  for  the  hand. 
The  law  of  attraction  is  a  thing  for  the  intellect 
just  as  much  as  a  piece  of  steel  and  a  loadstone. 
And  a  man  who  perceives  them,  and  enriches  his 
reason  with  them,  broadens  his  life  vastly  beyond 
that  of  the  man  who  deals  in  houses  and  estates 
as  matters  of  property  alone.  He  gets  vitally 
into  communion  with  wide  substances  of  nature, 
while  the  other  man  uses  them  only  mechanically 
to  extend  the  scale  of  his  existence. 

A  man,  also,  who  understands  bread-making, 
why  yeast  makes  it  rise,  and  how  it  nourishes  the 
body,  deals  with  the  realities  just  as  much  as  the 
man  who  mixes  and  kneads  the  dough,  and  de- 
rives substance  from  it  as  truly  as  by  eating  the 
loaf.  Or,  further,  the  man  who  discerns  the  rela- 
tions of  gold  to  geology,  in  what  age  it  was  cast 
up,  how  it  was  washed  into  stream-beds  or  mixed 
with  the  quartz,  and  how  it  is  purified  and  coined, 
owns  money  as  an  intellectual  being,  whether 
he  has  physical  control  over  it  or  not,  because 
his  life  receives  nutriment  from  the  truth  which 
invests  it,  and  by  which  it  is  stamped  ideally  as 
a  precious  metal  by  the  wisdom  of  the  Creator. 

Thus  every  sense  is  an  avenue  or  duct  for 
transmitting  material  of  life  to  the  mind  as  well 
as  to  the  body.  Strike  the  eye  from  the  human 
race,  and  human  life  would  thenceforth  be  palsied 


Existence  and  Life.  263 

to  the  whole  extent  of  the  truth  that  knocks  for 
entrance  into  the  spirit  at  the  optic  nerve.  De- 
stroy the  ear,  and  life  is  robbed  of  the  nutrition 
offered  by  the  truth  that  rides  towards  us  on 
waves  of  sound,  in  conversation,  debate,  elo- 
quence, music.  We  live  just  to  the  extent  of  our 
reception  into  the  deeper  nature  from  the  rational 
vesture  and  effluence  of  things. 

And  beauty  is  as  real  a  thing  as  a  flower.  The 
exquisiteness  of  a  landscape  is  as  substantial  as 
the  land.  Where  a  man's  spirit  is  stimulated  and 
refreshed  by  such  aspects  of  nature,  his  life  is 
increased  as  really  as  it  is  sustained  by  the  prod- 
ucts of  the  soil. 

How  many  artists  are  fed  by  the  White  Moun- 
tains !  The  corn  and  parsnips  which  the  Saco 
meadows  bear  find  their  way  to  the  cellars  of 
New  England,  every  winter,  as  provision  for  the 
body ;  but  these  men  carry  the  slopes,  ridges, 
rocky  tendons  and  imperial  dome  of  Mt.  Wash- 
ington itself  with  them.  They  unravel  the  lines 
of  its  beauty  and  strength,  and  turn  them  into 
instincts  for  the  creation  of  beauty.  They  wind 
their  powers  around  it  like  an  anaconda  around 
a  goat,  and  crush  it  into  pulp,  —  breathe  in  its 
mists,  lap  its  sunshine,  drink  the  aerial  wine  of 
its  morning  and  evening  hues,  and  feel  it  dissolve 
into  their  being,  like  the  juices  which  the  bee 
absorbs  from  a  flower,  to  exude  upon  canvas  in 
the  spiritual  honey  of  art. 

Again,  going  up  still  higher,  we  find  that  the 


264  Existence  and  Life. 

meaning  of  things  is  no  less  substantial  than 
things  themselves.  The  man  who  finds  the  ex- 
istence, laws,  and  wisdom  of  the  Infinite  hinted 
to  him  continually  in  the  colors  of  the  earth  and 
the  mystic  order  of  the  firmament  deals  with  real- 
ities as  much  as  the  man  who  sees  the  science 
of  the  earth  and  the  systems  of  the  sky ;  and 
both  of  them  are  in  contact  with  the  substances 
of  things  as  really  as  the  man  who  owns  land  and 
eats  the  products  of  it. 

When  you  look  at  a  great  picture,  what  do  you 
call  the  essential  fact  before  you?  —  the  canvas 
which  the  fingers  can  feel,  the  pigments  which 
possibly  can  be  scraped  off  in  a  murky  paste  and 
weighed,  or  the  proportions  of  a  human  form 
which  glow  on  the  cloth,  and  back  of  this,  the 
saintly  expression  that  steals  through  the  hues,  as 
though  the  soul  of  an  angel  had  condescended 
to  be  imprisoned  perpetually  there  in  color?  So 
the  nature  that  has  only  material  relations  to  the 
universe,  and  acts  as  though  physical  things  are 
the  chief  fountains  of  life,  simply  crumbles  in  its 
gross  fingers  the  web  on  which  divine  splendors 
and  mysteries  are  outlined  and  tinted  for  the  cul- 
ture of  the  intellect,  the  charm  of  taste,  and  the 
feeding  of  the  life  of  the  soul ! 

The  great  question,  therefore,  concerning  a 
man's  life  is,  What  tendrils  has  he  out?  from  how 
many  grades  of  divine  substance  is  he  drawing 
sustenance  and  power?  We  are  put  here  to  se- 
crete something  everlasting  out  of  nature.  The 


Existence  and  Life.  265 

opportunities  are  rich,  but  it  is  the  capacity,  the 
fibre,  that  determines  whether  we  shall  do  it;  for 
nature  contributes  to  our  life,  not  primarily  ac- 
cording to  its  bounty,  but  according  to  the  fila- 
ments in  us  that  will  solicit  and  incorporate  its 
bounty.  One  man  absorbs  mathematical  truth 
out  of  the  heavens,  while  side  by  side  with  him 
a  mortal  exists  that  organizes  nothing  grand  or 
stately  into  his  constitution,  — just  as  the  mush- 
room can  do  no  more  than  hoist  its  pleated  parasol 
out  of  the  same  ground  and  in  the  same  sunlight 
from  which  the  oak-seed  imbibed  slowly  its  tre- 
mendous strength.  Another  man  draws  to  him- 
self the  wisdom  printed  in  the  granite  leaves 
beneath  us,  which  earthquakes  have  turned  for 
our  benefit,  and  shows  that  he  has  ennobled  his 
life  by  it,  and  represents  it  wherever  he  moves. 
A  third  wins  the  divine  thought  hinted  in  the  old 
bones  which  the  globe  entombs ;  while  a  fourth 
fastens  on  history,  and  compels  the  laws  of  it  to 
filter  through  facts  and  ooze  into  his  reason. 

Isaac  Newton  shoots  out  mental  fibres  that 
twine  around  every  planet  of  the  solar  system. 
He  not  only  expends  his  energies  on  the  alge- 
braic problems  they  offer,  but  absorbs  the  secret 
of  their  harmony,  and  builds  up  the  sinewy  sym- 
me^ry  of  his  intellect  out  of  the  juices  of  the 
divine  thought  they  hold.  He  squeezed  the  moon 
and  wrung  the  nectar  of  universal  law  out  of  it,  as 
a  school-boy  sucks  an  orange  dry. 

Goethe  has  told  us  how  much  each  of  his 
12 


266  Existence  and  Life. 

paragraphs  and  bon-mots  cost  him  in  gold.  But 
really  his  education  and  the  healthy  vigor  of 
matured  genius  cost  all  history  and  all  art.  It 
cost  Italy  and  the  East  It  cost  the.  calm  laws 
that  thread  and  sway  the  fever  of  modern  civiliza- 
tion. For  these  were  the  sources  out  of  which 
that  serene,  cold  scholarship  and  wisdom  were 
slowly  secreted  by  the  branching  faculties  that 
seemed  to  Jet  no  sphere  lie  ungrasped  by  their 
tough  ligaments. 

Think  what  it  cost  to  cultivate  and  perfect  the 
genius  of  Turner,  the  English  painter !  Search 
for  the  treasuries  of  his  life,  and  you  find  him 
twisted  in  vitally  with  the  Alps  and  the  sea,  — 
with  the  grace  suffused  in  trees  that  makes  their 
limbs  bend  in  Gothic  arches,  that  flushes  the 
west  with  sunset-pomp,  and  flings  the  unsubstan- 
tial gold  of  evening  over  the  meadow-grass  ! 

Lieutenant  Maury  drags  the  sea,  yes,  distils  out 
of  it  the  complex  and  subtile  forces  that  pene- 
trate its  deeps,  hem  and  hurry  its  currents,  and 
rein  in  its  bounding  strength  at  the  pleasure  of 
Him  who  said,  "  Thus  far  shalt  thou  go  and  no 
farther."  He  carries  the  essence  of  the  ocean 
with  him,  as  a  power,  a  trophy,  and  a  resource 
of  his  intellectual  life. 

See  how  Carlyle  feeds  his  shaggy  intellect0out 
of  the  French  Revolution,  the  storms  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  the  commotions  in  England,  — 
rioting  in  the  bitter  wisdom  which  he  crushes 
out  of  the  laws  of  retribution  that  run  through 


Existence  and  Life.  267 

all  history,  and,  Scandinavian  Titan  that  he  is, 
drinking  the  aqua-fortis  of  the  Divine  justice 
from  the  skulls  of  empires,  like  savory  wine. 

Think  how  Dickens,  instead  of  being  accident- 
ally related,  like  most  of  us,  to  the  men  and 
women  of  our  neighborhoods,  —  shaking  hands 
with  them,  and  entertaining  a  few  by  outward 
hospitality,  stretches  the  antennae  of  his  sensibili- 
ties, sympathy,  and  imagination  far  and  wide  into 
our  modern  civilization,  and  is  capable  of  drain- 
ing the  moral  substance  of  London,  —  striking 
some  tap-root  of  his  intellect,  affection,  or  humor 
into  every  alley,  parlor,  and  counting-house  of  it, 
to  refresh  and  enlarge  his  genius. 

Or  look  up  from  the  poor  surface-existence  of 
the  senses,  in  which  we  are  so  apt  to  suppose  that 
life  consists,  —  from  the  pride  and  silly  pleasures 
of  a  man  who  thinks  it  a  great  thing  to  be  dis- 
tinguished by  his  house  and  his  money,  —  to 
the  intellect  of  Humboldt  which  no  house  can 
cover;  broad-based  as  a  mountain  in  the  physi- 
cal truth  of  things,  its  sides  clad  with  the  tilted 
strata  of  the  earth,  lifting  its  summit  above  storms 
and  vapors,  and  catching  some  wisdom  from  each 
brilliant  point  of  the  heavens,  as  every  star  of 
the  night  flings  a  sparkle  on  the  frosty  cone  of 
Chimborazo! 

We  often  talk  about  a  "  live  man."  It  is  very 
seldom  that  we  see  one  of  our  fellows  who  is 
half  alive.  Indeed,  a  great  many  of  us,  as  to  our 
humanity,  are  not  born  yet.  The  faculties  that 


268  Existence  and  Life. 

inspire  life  have  not  opened  their  eyes.  A  really 
live  man  would  be  one,  every  bump  of  whose 
brain  should  be  a  hopper  into  which  material 
would  be  streaming  from  all  quarters  of  the  uni- 
verse to  be  ground  up  into  internal  riches  and 
strength. 

Somebody  once  asked  an  eccentric  friend  of 
mine,  who  is  quite  a  vegetarian,  what  he  found 
fit  to  live  upon  ;  and  a  day  or  two  afterwards 
the  old  gentleman  showed  his  questioner  a  little 
poem  he  had  written  in  reply,  sa}ring,  that  he 
breakfasted  on  Socrates,  lunched  on  Pythagoras, 
dined  often  on  Moses  or  Paul,  kept  Plato  as  his 
rare  Johannisberg,  and  used  Charles  Lamb  as 
dessert,  Tennyson  and  Shelley  as  cream  puffs, 
with  Sydney  Smith  for  Worcestershire  sauce. 
There  was  a  meat  diet  for  you,  a  wholesome 
cannibalism  of  the  soul !  And  so  we  were  made 
to  live  on  stars,  and  strata,  and  the  philosophy  of 
Bacon. 

Thus,  as  Emerson  says,  "  we  sit  by  the  fire  and 
take  hold  on  the  poles  of  the  earth."  The  skies 
are  the  market,  and  the  globe  itself  the  cellar, 
and  history  the  larder,  from  which  the  manna  and 
wine  of  truth  are  to  be  gathered  freely  by  the 
human  nature,  which  the  body  clothes  to  support 
and  ennoble  its  life.  We  merely  exist  among 
things,  if  we  do  not  penetrate  by  some  pungent 
faculty  into  the  essence  of  some  district  of  nature, 
and  feel  it  transmuted  into  our  own  being.  "A 
man  is  a  centre  for  nature,  running  out  threads 


Existence  and  Life.  269 

of  relation  through  everything,  fluid  and  solid, 
material  and  elemental." 

We  must  see,  therefore,  that  space  has  very 
little  to  do  with  our  real  life.  By  casting  latitude 
and  longitude  you  can  tell  only  where  a  man 
exists :  where  he  lives  depends  on  where  his 
deepest  interest  is. 

One  man  exists  in  the  world  of  business ;  but 
there  are  a  score  of  chinks  and  crannies  between 
the  stones  of  his  warehouse,  his  bales,  crates,  and 
ledgers,  through  which  his  interior  nature  sends 
out  aspirations  and  appetites  into  the  world  of 
substance.  Another  man  exists  in  the  world  of 
business,  and  lives  there,  too,  in  a  mean  and 
perilous  sense.  Old  Paracelsus  used  to  say  that 
every  man  carries  a  demon  in  his  stomach,  who 
conducts  digestion  by  processes  of  alchemy ;  and 
you  now  and  then  see  a  man  enclosing  a  goblin 
to  preside  over  liver,  spleen,  and  pylorus,  cunning 
enough  to  pulverize  money  and  turn  it  into  a 
heart  and  sympathies  so  hard  that  you  might  break 
the  paving-stones  of  Wall  Street  against  them. 
Another  man  exists  in  the  world  of  business,  and 
desires  to  live  by  nobler  faculties  outside  of  it,  but 
has  not  force  enough  to  push  any  intellectual  and 
delicate  filaments  through  the  casings  of  counting- 
room  and  store.  He  is  an  appendage  to  his  oc- 
cupation. The  things  he  owns  cannot  be  called 
his  possessions;  for  they  possess  him.  He  is 
their  secretary,  to  keep  the  moth  and  rust  from 
them,  see  to  their  insurance,  cast  their  interest, 


270  Existence  and  Life. 

and  attend  to  the  law-business  they  involve.  It 
is  not  seldom  that  an  estate  or  a  warehouse  jumps, 
in  this  way,  upon  a  soul  and  rides  it  lean,  like 
the  Old  Man  of  the  Sea  on  Sindbad's  back. 

Yet  let  us  not  forget  to  say  that  the  great  mer- 
chant's life  is  no  more  confined  to  the  limits  of 
his  visible  sphere,  or  to  the  material  objects  with 
which  he  deals  than  a  great  poet's,  or  a  great 
artist's  life  is.  "Might  you  penetrate  the  inner 
counting-room  of  some  mercantile  establishment, 
—  the  merchant's  brain,  —  you  would  find  at 
work  there  an  imagination  whose  sweep  circum- 
navigates the  globe,  penetrates  the  policies  of 
distant  cabinets,  and  anticipates  the  prospects 
of  remote  kingdoms ;  studies  the  play  of  social 
caprices,  predicts  the  yield  of  fields  he  never  saw, 
and  the  fertility  of  seasons  yet  to  roll ;  weighs  in 
his  letter-scale  the  chances  of  peace  and  war; 
with  a.  prophetic  vision  beholds  and  secures,  in 
regions  now  waste  and  unvalued,  the  spots  that 
population  is  presently  to  seek ;  picks  out  the 
single  gifted  projector,  the  solitary,  sagacious  pro- 
ject, among  the  thousand  visionaries  and  the  ten 
thousand  visions  that  wear  an  equal  promise  in 
ordinary  eyes,  and  doubles  and  redoubles  his 
fortune  on  a  capital  in  which  sagacity,  forecast, 
meditation,  and  faith  are  the  largest  figures." 
Such  men  are  among  the  noblest  trophies  of 
modern  society.  They  live  half  a  poet's  life. 
Their  schemes,  benefiting  the  world,  enlarge  our 
conception  of  the  breadth  of  living,  and  show  us 


Existence  and  Life.  271 

how  cargoes  of  hides  and  ship-loads  of  cotton 
and  restless  bills  of  exchange  are  the  busy  shut- 
tles of  a  unity  of  life  which  national  prejudices, 
animosities,  and  hostilities  of  faith  could  never 
weave. 

Where  a  man's  deepest  interest  is,  —  not  in  the 
space  he  occupies, — there  is  his  life.  The  learned 
blacksmith,  Elihu  Burritt,  blows  his  bellows  and 
hammers  his  iron  in  Worcester,  Mass,  j  but  if 
you  could  look  at  his  mind  you  would  see  fifty 
languages  shooting  out  their  feathery  wings  on 
it :  look  at  his  spirit  and  it  is  flying  from  land  to 
land,  like  a  dove,  emblem  of  the  genius  of  our 
religion,  with  the  olive-leaves  of  peace.  If  one 
had  hunted  for  the  Apostle  Paul  in  Ephesus,  "he 
would  have  been  found,  perhaps,  working  on 
sail-cloth  in  a  tent-maker's  shop ;  but  this  tent  of 
time  was  tattered  over  his  head  while  he  was  at 
his  toil,  and  there  were  mystic  breathings  and 
melodies  in  the  air  about  him,  which  no  observer 
could  have  heard,  and  a  subtler  light  than  that 
of  the  sun  played  about  his  needle  as  he  stitched 
the  Cilician  canvas  faithfully,  —  "a  light  that 
never  was  on  sea  or  land." 

"  A  man  may  dwell  in  Paradise  and  dream  of 
a  cabbage-garden,  or  he  may  dwell  in  a  cabbage- 
garden  and  dream  of  Paradise."  The  dwelling 
shows  where  he  exists  ;  the  dream  determines 
where  he  lives.  So  some  men  exist  in  Boston, 
but  live  abroad  :  the  social  problems,  the  art,  or 
the  scenery  of  Europe  supplying  the  atmosphere 


272  Existence  and  Life. 

of  their  taste  and  intellect.  Another  man  exists 
to-day,  but  lives  yesterday.  The  past  is  the 
mould  in  which  his  mind  thrives.  He  is  vitally 
related  with  Pompeii  and  ancient  society  and 
Greek  poetry,  more  than  with  Washington  and 
Kansas  and  Dr.  Kane.  Now  and  then  you  see 
a  man  who  lives  so  far  in  the  past  that  he  may 
be  said  to  be  not  so  much  behind  the  age  as 
behind  all  ages. 

A  man  who  does  not  believe  with  his  whole  mind 
and  heart  in  freedom,  who  will  ever  suffer  himself 
to  sneer  at  it,  or  to  carp  at  the  eloquent  vigor 
of  its  western  Magna  Charta,  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  and  who  will  allow  any  catch- 
word or  technicality  to  detain  his  sympathies 
from  the  side  where  the  spirit  of  liberty  struggles 
against  fraud  and  force  for  new  foothold,  cannot 
be  said  to  live  in  America.  He  is  spiritually  an 
Austrian,  warmed  by  a  western  sun,  fed  by 
American  wheat,  using  the  Anglo-Saxon  speech, 
protected  and  enfolded  by  a  history  with  which 
he  has  no  vital  sympathy,  and  which  he  feels  no 
sacred  passion  to  continue.  Is  it  difficult  to  tell 
on  which  side  his  affinities  would  have  fastened 
eighty  years  ago? 

Your  next-door  neighbor,  who  bows  to  you 
courteously  and  shakes  hands  with  you  every  day, 
may  live  more  intimately  with  Cicero  or  Mozart 
or  Napoleon  than  with  any  dwellers  in  the  block 
he  inhabits.  Taste  and  learning  dissipate  at 
once  the  bonds  of  space  and  time,  and  open  the 


Existence  and  Life.  273 

world  of  wisdom  or  of  artistic  luxury  for  man's 
abode. 

I  have  often  thought  of  the  magical  changes 
that  would  be  wrought,  if  the  pressures  and  dead- 
weights of  the  body  could  be  annihilated,  and  the 
myriads  of  beings  about  us,  like  balloons  cut 
from  their  fastenings,  should  range  themselves 
at  once  into  a  society  according  to  the  affinities 
and  specific  gravity  of  their  real  natures.  Fifth 
Avenues  and  Beacon  Streets  would  then  be 
gained  and  held  by  actual  culture  and  inmost 
refinement ;  and  all  who  had  not  these  intrinsic 
titles  to  such  regions  would  fall  to  the  alleys  and 
byways  of  the  permanent  universe,  by  sogginess 
of  spirit.  The  real  President  —  representative 
in  his  nature  of  the  whole  diameter  of  American 
history,  from  the  faith  that  gnawed  its  way  into 
Plymouth  Rock  to  the  fortitude  that  rebuilds  the 
hotel  in  distant  Lawrence  —  would  rise  to  the 
true  White  House.  And  instead  of  the  seeming 
huddled  anarchy  of  our  visible  society,  the  latent 
order,  which  only  the  prophet  sees,  would  become 
the  conspicuous  and  palpable  order :  tiers  of  spirits 
would  sink  to  the  deeps  of  dissipation,  misery,  or 
remorse  ;  others  would  float  on  the  strata  of  envy, 
pride,  and  self-love  ;  some  would  find  the  brilliant 
district  of  the  sphere  of  truth  through  their  con- 
trolling intellectual  hunger  ;  others  the  rosy  realm 
of  beauty ;  the  selectest  bands  would  be  seen  in 
the  serene,  warm  light  of  charity :  and  so  society 
would  show  the  order  of  Dante's  great  poem, 
12*  R 


274  Existence  and  Life. 

banding  itself  in  circles  of  life  that  narrow  down- 
wards to  the  base  of  the  pit,  and  sweep  up  and 
yet  up  to  the  joys  of  Paradise  !  * 

*  This  lecture  Mr.  King  left  unfinished.  From  his  hasty  notes 
it  would  seem  that  he  intended  to  show  that  the  Bible  was  em- 
phatically the  "  Book  of  Life."  "  How  life  is  packed  into  it,"  he 
writes ;  "  not  an  abstract  chapter,  —  life  of  all  the  faculties  of  man." 
Again,  "  If  we  could  see  men  pictorially,  with  the  constituents  of 
their  life  around  them,  we  should  see  bees  swarming  around  one, 
birds  glittering  around  Audubon,  fishes  swimming  around  Agas- 
siz,  Swammerdam  enveloped  in  infusoria,  and  Herschel  with  a 
star  on  his  forehead."  Another  item  is  to  this  effect :  "  A  rolling 
stone  gathers  no  moss :  a  whizzing  soul  gathers  no  wisdom." 


VIII. 

THE  EARTH  AND  THE  MECHANIC  ARTS. 

I  ONCE  had  the  privilege,  in  the  Observatory 
at  Cambridge,  of  looking  through  a  powerful 
telescope  at  the  planet  Jupiter.  It  seemed  to 
be  a  ball  about  as  large  as  the  moon  at  the  full, 
not  white  or  silvery,  but  tinted  with  straw  color, 
except  at  the  poles,  where  it  was  deadened  into 
gray,  and  showing  leaden  streaks  across  the  cen- 
tre which  at  a  low  power  of  the  instrument  ap- 
peared like  one  unbroken  equatorial  belt.  It  is  a 
magnificent  world,  that  planet  Jupiter,  —  the  levi- 
athan of  our  solar  sea.  It  is  fourteen  hundred 
times  as  large  as  our  own  globe,  and  seventy  thou- 
sand times  the  volume  of  the  moon,  —  whose  size 
it  resembles  through  the  telescope,  —  and  there 
it  hangs ;  its  weight,  its  mass,  its  interests,  its 
mysteries,  all  reduced  to  a  striped  and  tinted  film 
moving,  swimming  in  the  blue  firmament. 

So  our  earth  appears  to  a  distant  observer 
within  our  system.  To  some  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  side  of  the  moon  which  we  see  (if  there  be 
intelligence  there),  it  is  a  glorious  globe,  fixed 
perpetually  in  their  zenith,  fourteen  times  as  huge 
as  the  full  moon  looks  to  us,  delicately  colored, 


276      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts. 

like  Jupiter,  and  marked  by  belts,  not  perpetual 
but  changing.  What  a  poetic  spectacle  it  must 
be  !  What  verses  must  be  written  in  celebration 
of  it  by  the  Tennysons  and  Wordsworths  among 
our  lunar  friends  ! 

We  may  well  wonder  what  they  think  such  a 
vast  orb  was  thus  bathed  in  beauty  for.  It  must 
look  to  them,  as  they  study  it  with  powerful 
glasses,  like  a  floating  Arcadia,  not  made  for 
work  but  for  dreamy  joy.  And  if  one  could  be 
brought  gradually  nearer  to  it,  till  at  last  we 
could  see  the  line  of  the  morning  or  of  sunset 
travel  over  it,  bringing  out  the  rose  and  gold  on 
its  mountains,  flooding  its  turning  and  white- 
edged  seas  with  purple,  bathing  its  hundreds  of 
miles  of  forests,  and  sweeping  broad  leagues 
of  prairie-green,  the  splendor  would  be  so  over- 
powering that  no  thought  of  toil  could  be  asso- 
ciated with  such  an  abode.  Or  if  any  work  was 
connected  with  it  in  the  mind  of  such  an  ob- 
server, it  would  be  that  of  artists  only,  students 
and  executors  of  beauty.  Perhaps,  if  seen  as  the 
shadows  settle  on  it,  and  it  turns  its  vast  disk 
into  the  gloom  through  which  only  starlight 
gleams,  it  might  seem  to  be  a  sanctuary-orb, 
fitted  up  for  cloister-spirits  to  meditate  in  and 
send  up  the  worship  of  reverent  and  quiet  aspi- 
ration. 

But  this  is  the  distant  view  and  estimate  of  the 
earth.  As  we  come  nearer  to  it  its  roughnesses 
start  out,  its  poetic  hues  grow  fainter.  It  stares 


The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts.      277 

at  us  as  a  rugged  reality.  It  is  no  Eden,  in  the 
close  acquaintance.  It  is  a  sphere  for  hard  and 
bitter  toil, — a  world  to  be  subdued  and  tamed.  It 
was  not  made  for  artists  chiefly,  or  for  pietistic 
dreamers,  but  for  men  with  working  clothes,  and 
vigorous  muscles,  and  the  conquering  implements 
of  mechanical  skill. 

I  am  to  speak  to-night  on  the  nobleness  of  the 
mechanic  arts,  —  the  true  and  permanent  ground 
of  our  reverence  for  them,  and  the  respect  due  to 
those  who  represent  them.  And  this  is  the  first 
thought  which  must  arrest  and  hold  us  :  the  world 
itself  was  made  by  the  Creator  as  a  field  chiefly 
for  the  display  and  advance  of  the  mechanic  arts, 
and  for  the  education  of  man  through  the  exercise 
and  improvement  of  them. 

In  saying  this  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  lit- 
erature of  the  highest  order  is  not  better,  as 
an  expression  of  human  nature,  than  machinery  ; 
nor  that  painting,  music,  grand  architecture,  all 
exquisite  things,  are  not  of  loftier  grade,  as  hu- 
man products,  than  ploughs,  furnaces,  and  lathes. 
I  do  not  mean  to  say  or  imply  that  noble  char- 
acter, that  sincere  worship,  is  not  the  highest 
attainment,  the  consummate  flower  of  the  globe 
and  society.  And  I  am  very  far  from  suggest- 
ing or  believing  that  the  doom  of  the  majority 
of  the  race  is  to  be  coarse  and  unintelligent 
toil. 

Men  were  made  to  attain  ideas  and  to  exhibit 
and  illustrate  intellectual  power  on  the  earth. 


278      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts. 

But  the  chief  proportion  of  the  ideas  gained  and 
of  the  mental  power  developed  by  the  residents 
of  this  globe  is  to  be  shown,  not  through  the  finer 
arts,  but  through  the  arts  that  transmute  matter 
and  conquer  nature.  When  a  seed  is  planted 
the  intention  is  that  air  and  soil  and  light  and  rain 
shall  be  worked  over  into  a  vital  and  organized 
product.  Now  the  human  intellect  is  placed  on 
the  globe  to  work  as  a  transmuting  and  organiz- 
ing power  on  the  matter  of  the  planet,  to  subdue 
it  to  intelligent,  useful,  and  moral  purposes,  and 
to  set  its  forces  in  new  and  noble  combinations 
for  beneficent  ends. 

The  mastery  of  the  earth  is  the  chief  command 
and  trust  which  the  Almighty  has  committed  to 
mortals  here.  It  is  this  command  which  enno- 
bles labor,  and  places  the  mechanic  arts,  through 
which  alone  the  mastery  of  the  earth  is  gained, 
in  their  central  position  as  expressions  of  human 
power  and  symbols  of  human  duty. 

Some  of  the  most  striking  and  brilliant  chap- 
ters of  natural  religion  are  opened  by  a  study 
of  the  relation  of  man  to  the  earth  as  the  elabo- 
rator  of  matter.  I  recall  with  great  interest  and 
satisfaction  the  instruction  I  received,  five  or 
six  years  ago,  from  a  little  book  published  in 
New  York,  from  the  pen  of  Thomas  Ewbank, 
entitled  "The  World  a  Workshop."  Such  a 
book  does  immense  service  by  connecting  large 
ideas  with  the  branches  of  skilful  labor,  and  I 
remember  how  deeply  I  was  impressed  by  it  as 


The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts.      279 

a  new  and  rich  contribution  to  natural  religioa 
Every  mechanic  ought  to  own  it,  and  read  it  and 
re-read  it.  I  do  not  know  that  it  is  on  sale  in  this 
city,  or  is  in  the  libraries  here.  Possibly  it  is 
.  out  of  print  now,  although  I  hope  not. 

As  soon  as  we  grasp  the  conception  that  man 
was  made  to  be  an  artificer  of  matter,  to  gain 
control  of  the  planet,  and  build  up  civilization, 
and  enlarge  his  own  intellect  and  nature  by  that 
work,  we  detect  distinct  and  charming  revelations 
of  Divine  thought  and  plan  in  the  connection 
between  man  and  nature. 

See  the  relation  between  the  muscular  power 
of  man  and  the  force  of  gravitation.  That  is  the 
basis  power  on  which,  by  which,  and  with  which 
we  are  to  work.  If  a  man  with  his  present  mus- 
cular force  were  placed  on  the  sun,  he  could  not 
move.  His  frame  would  be  crushed  at  once  by 
the  tremendous  pull  of  the  sun's  mass  upon  him. 
Place  him  on  Jupiter,  and  he  would  not  be  half 
so  strong  as  now.  He  would  stagger  along  as 
if  he  had  not  too  much  but  too  little  spirit,  or 
as  if,  like  one  of  the  German  turners  in  the  for- 
mation of  the  living  pyramid,  he  had  two  men 
and  a  boy  standing  on  his  shoulders.  Place  him 
on  the  first  of  the  satellites  of  Jupiter,  and  he 
would  have  ten  thousand  times  the  physical  power 
he  has  here,  and  could  easily  jump  ten  or  fif- 
teen miles.  We  can  easily  conceive  the  relation 
between  the  strength  of  the  frame  and  the  force 
of  gravitation  to  have  been  such  that  men  would 


280      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts. 

not  be  half  so  free,  and  that  the  mechanical 
powers  could  not  have  been  half  so  efficient. 
Mechanic  arts  and  triumphs  are  provided  for  in 
the  primary  fact  of  the  proportion  between  our 
muscles  and  the  globe's  dead  pull. 

I  will  not  speak  at  any  length  of  the  structure 
of  the  hand  in  relation  to  the  arts  by  which  matter 
is  subdued.  You  are  all  familiar  with  what  may  be 
said  on  that  point.  Man  alone  is  endowed  with 
a  hand;  and  in  the  combination  it  reveals  of 
strength  with  variety  of  motion,  in  the  nice  ad- 
justment of  firmness  to  delicacy  of  perception,  in 
the  balance  between  the  softness  of  the  flesh  and 
the  sensibility  of  the  nerves  and  the  toughness 
of  the  muscles,  in  the  forms  and  relations  of  the 
fingers  and  thumb,  in  the  provisions  wrought 
into  its  structure  for  holding,  striking,  pulling, 
feeling,  weaving,  spinning,  and  the  numberless 
methods  of  service  which  the  useful  and  the 
fine  arts  require,  are  seen  some  of  the  most 
recondite  proofs  of  Divine  skill  and  far-reaching 
adaptation  that  have  enriched  the  science  of 
natural  theology.  The  strength  of  the  elephant 
and  the  instinct  of  the  bee  would  be  poor  com- 
pensation for  the  paralysis  of  a  nerve,  or  the 
subtraction  of  a  muscle  from  its  composition. 
When  God  formed  the  hand  of  Adam,  the  mas- 
tery of  the  whole  planet  by  the  human  race  was 
prophesied  and  provided  for. 

Consider,  too,  the  structure  and  composition 
of  the  earth's  crust  in  connection  with  the  call  of 


The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts.      28 1 

man  to  be  a  great  artificer.  If  the  strata  of  the 
globe  had  been  laid  even,  and  in  the  order  of 
their  heaviness,  and  if  the  metals  had  been  made 
by  Providence  in  pure  masses  unmixed  with  ore, 
as  coal  is,  or  granite,  the  possibility  of  almost  all 
the  arts  would  have  been  annulled.  But  the 
comparative  lawlessness  of  the  distribution  of 
the  strata,  the  intermixing  of  material  by  convul- 
sions and  earthquakes,  the  creation  of  metals  in 
the  ore  state  so  that  they  can  be  broken,  handled, 
and  artificially  fused  into  masses  compact  and 
pure,  place  the  globe  at  man's  disposal,  instead 
of  making  him  its  slave.  The  study  of  iron, 
coal,  and  granite,  as  related  to  civilization,  and  to 
their  places  in  the  earth's  crust,  opens  one  of  the 
deepest,  richest,  and  most  mystic  volumes  that 
embody  the  beneficence  of  Providence.  No  man 
can  help  standing  with  uncovered  soul  before  the 
organization  and  interests  of  labor,  who  becomes 
acquainted  with  the  provisions,  ages  on  ages 
before  the  advent  of  man,  for  the  supply  to  the 
future  workshops  on  the  globe  of  coal  and  iron. 
The  old  forests  of  buried  geological  epochs,  which 
grew  when  no  human  being  could  have  breathed 
the  planet's  air,  the  play  and  fury  of  the  central 
fires  that  seem  in  a  narrow  view  only  disastrous, 
and  the  lawlessness  of  the  strata  of  the  globe, 
which  might  be  easily  conceived  the  freak  of 
chance,  turn  out  eloquent  witnesses  of  the  presi- 
dency over  all  ages  of  a  plan  which  contemplated 
man  as  the  master-workman  of  the  future,  the 


282      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts. 

large-brained  and  noble  mechanic,  for  whom  the 
most  ample  and  various  supply  of  material  must 
be  provided,  that  his  cunning  and  his  genius 
might  be  at  once  stimulated  and  equipped. 

It  is  wrong  to  touch  points  like  these,  which 
require  particular  illustrations  to  vivify  them,  and 
to  leave  them  in  general  statement.  But  the 
field  of  particulars  is  so  rich  that  a  lecture  would 
be  monopolized  by  any  one  department  of  them, 
and  I  must  only  sound  the  keynote,  hint  the  mu- 
sic to  which  it  points,  and  pass  on  to  consider 
in  another  aspect  the  nobleness  of  the  arts  that 
are  engaged  in  dignifying  and  transmuting  matter. 

For  thousands  of  years  society  has  been  strug- 
gling against  a  prejudice  that  labor  upon  matter, 
except  in  the  most  refined  and  artistic  ways,  is 
degrading.  According  to  the  highest  aristocratic 
prejudice,  even  the  sculptor's  and  the  profes- 
sional architect's  employment  is  demeaning,  in 
comparison  with  the  ineffable  honor  of  plenty  of 
inherited  money,  having  nothing  to  do,  and  doing 
it.  But  all  lower  methods  of  handling  matter, 
working  it  into  useful  forms,  and  putting  ideas 
into  it,  are  accounted  incompatible  with  pre- 
tension to  position,  —  utterly  under  ban.  To  be 
a  soldier,  an  orator,  a  poet,  —  to  be  able  to  ex- 
press skill  and  genius  in  destruction,  or  thought, 
fervor,  and  sentiment  in  breath  and  words,  is 
consistent  with  some  claim  to  social  standing 
high  and  secure;  but  to  express  conceptions  in 
machinery  that  create  wealth  and  happiness,  to 


The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts.      283 

utter  talent  and  genius  through  new  combinations 
of  matter  and  force,  puts  the  ungenteel  stamp 
upon  the  brow  of  the  body  and  the  spirit. 

The  literature  of  republican  principle  has  been 
wrestling  with  this  estimate  for  centuries.  How 
to  throw  back  this  scorn  of  creative  toil,  how  to 
prove,  in  behalf  of  labor,  that  direct  dealing  with 
matter  is  not  degrading,  and  that  the  mechanical 
departments  of  work  and  service  are  of  worthy 
rank,  and  are  not  to  be  abased  before  haughty 
insolence,  and  are  not  to  be  called  on  to  defend 
themselves  either,  —  how  to  do  this,  and  make 
the  protective  argument  felt  as  an  impeachment 
of  those  who  arraign  toil,  has  been  the  eager  aim 
of  those  whose  sympathy  with  the  race  is  widest 
and  most  penetrating. 

It  is  well  to  point  to  the  necessity  of  skilful  and 
creative  labor,  and  to  show  that  what  is  necessary 
to  the  existence  of  civilization  cannot  but  be 
honorable.  It  is  well  to  call  attention  to  the 
utility  of  such  labor,  and  to  make  the  vast  array 
of  services  which  the  elaborating  arts  have  ren- 
dered to  modern  centuries  speak  for  the  workers 
whose  busy  fidelity  they  express.  It  is  well  to 
wing  and  speed  the  arrows  of  satire  at  those  who 
believe  that  dainty  uselessness  is  the  height  of 
nobility,  —  that  the  pond,  and  not  the  river,  is 
the  type  of  excellence,  —  that  the  lotus,  and  not 
the  oak  wreath,  is  the  true  rewarding  crown. 

But  the  sovereign  answer  in  behalf  of  labor  is 
this  :  God  is  the  great  artificer.  The  Saviour 


284      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts. 

said,  "  My  Father  worketh  hitherto,  and  I  work." 
The  Infinite  intellect  is  perpetually  dealing  with 
matter.  There  is  not  a  particle  of  it  that  is  not 
vitalized,  moved,  and  moulded  by  him.  You 
think  it  low  to  be  a  carver  of  wood,  do  you, 
my  dilettante  friend  ?  Show  me  a  square  inch 
of  wood  on  this  orb  that  the  Creator  has  not 
fashioned !  Ship-building,  or  the  construction 
of  timber-bending  machinery,  is  not  in  accord- 
ance with  the  tests  of  the  best  society,  is  it? 
Show  me  a  natural  oak-knee  which  the  Crea- 
tor of  forests  has  not  bent !  Working  iron  into 
innumerable  uses  by  the  aid  of  implements  that 
enable  the  hands  to  wield  it,  and  to  deal  with  it 
when  heated,  imparts  or  suggests  some  social 
contamination,  does  it  ?  What  do  we  say  of  the 
Creator,  who  has  beaten  and  heated  and  alloyed 
every  atom  of  the  rough  iron  of  nature  ?  Open- 
ing mines  and  dealing  in  coal  soils  the  conven- 
tional position,  by  the  world's  ordinance.  What 
judgment  have  we  for  the  Lord  of  all  things,  who 
has  carbonized  and  blackened  and  packed  away 
in  the  cellar  of  the  planet  every  flake  of  the 
countless  myriads  of  tons  of  that  subterranean 
Ethiopia  which  is  now  yielding  its  crystallized 
fervor  to  the  needs  of  civilization? 

The  old  mythologies  depicted  a  separate  Deity 
for  each  district  of  nature.  Jupiter  presided  over 
the  air  and  the  lightning,  Vulcan  over  the  me- 
chanical processes ;  Neptune  swayed  the  sea, 
Pluto  the  central  depths  of  gloom  and  fire.  But 


The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  !A?/s.      285  /r>  v 

y     ( \\   ,  ^/.  < 

modern  religion  has  brushed  away  J:Jie;5e,  fancied'. » 

God  is  the  vitality  of  all  nature.     He  is  tb^foun-       O/r 
tain  of  all  force,  and  the  giver  of  all  law.     He'i  i/   ( 
in  direct  contact,  not  by  arms  and  fingers,  but  by*  ' . 
his  spirit,  with  every  atom  of  the  globe  and  of  all    - 
worlds.     He  is  the  artificer,  and  works  in  matter 
by  bringing  his  spirit  in  relations  to  it  far  more 
intimate  than  we  can  by  our  muscular  handlings 
of  it,  —  more  intimate  than   the  dealing  of  our 
spirits  with  our  bones  and  blood. 

We  speak  of  God  as  the  artist  of  nature,  —  its 
painter  and  ornamenter.  But  he  is  also  the  infi- 
nite manufacturer  and  mechanician.  Beneath  all 
the  polish  of  beauty  is  the  roughness  and  strength 
of  the  Vulcanic  labor.  Talk  of  a  plated  iron  war- 
vessel  that  can  float  and  yet  resist  a  broadside ! 
Think  of  our  globe  as  a  granite-sheathed  steamer 
floating  on  air,  —  her  plates  of  mail  compacted, 
bolted,  and  clinched  by  the  Almighty  himself, 
and  the  flame  of  Mauna  Loa  and  the  smoke  of 
Cotopaxi  hinting  the  deeps  and  terrors  of  her  fur- 
naces. Talk  of  a  clipper  that  cuts  the  latitudes 
indifferent  to  frosts  or  fervid  seas,  and  rounds 
Cape  Horn  with  glee.  Yes!  we  may  well  be  proud 
of  her.  Those  that  build  her  may  well  sing,  — 

"  Up  !  up  !  in  nobler  toil  than  ours 

No  craftsmen  bear  a  part, 
We  make  of  Nature's  giant  powers 

The  slaves  of  human  art. 
Lay  rib  to  rib  and  beam  to  beam, 
And  drive  the  treenails  free  ; 
Nor  faithless  joint  nor  yawning  seam 

Shall  tempt  the  searching  sea." 


286      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  A  rts. 
Yet  of  the  stanchest  clipper  we  must  say,  — 

"  Her  oaken  ribs  the  vulture  beak 
Of  northern  ice  may  peel ; 
The  sunken  rock  and  coral  peak 
May  grate  along  her  keel ; 
And  know  we  well  the  painted  shell 
We  give  to  wind  and  wave 
Must  float,  the  sailor's  citadel, 
Or  sink,  the  sailor's  grave !  " 

But  think  of  a  comet  like  our  last  visitor,  that 
is  built  with  fleecy  sails  to  cross  every  latitude  of 
the  planetary  world,  to  sweep  far  out  beyond  the 
Cape  Horn  of  the  system  into  boundless  cold  and 
night,  and  then  to  bend,  to  point  her  misty  prow 
towards  the  invisible  sun,  to  obey  a  helm  that 
keeps  her  true  through  the  bleak  star-watched  ether 
to  move  on  till  he  becomes  visible  again,  to  hasten 
then  as  by  a  pressing  breeze,  to  cross  once  more 
the  track  of  the  sluggish  orbs,  to  fly  nearer  and 
nearer,  seeing  him  swell  as  she  approaches,  and 
at  last  spreading  more  canvas,  skysails,  studding- 
sails,  as  she  rushes  into  splendor,  sweeping  around 
him  again,  true  to  the  predicted  hour  in  a  course  of 
a  thousand  years,  no  soil,  no  barnacles,  no  tattered 
tackle  upon  her,  and  shaking  out,  as  she  passes 
the  hot  goal,  a  broad  pennant  of  light  that  streams 
fifty  millions  of  miles  ! 

Or  shall  we  raise  the  question  of  steam-engine 
building  and  a  railway-track,  and  of  its  worthiness 
as  a  business  in  a  social  point  of  view?  When  we 
are  about  to  settle  it,  suppose  that  we  think  of  the 
sun  and  the  solar  system  as  an  engine  and  train 


The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts.      287 

of  cars,  and  ask  who  built  them,  and  with  what 
expenditure  of  time  and  thought  and  interest. 
For,  besides  the  circular  motion  of  the  planets 
around  the  sun,  the  sun  himself,  with  all  his  train 
of  globes  and  satellites,  is  plunging  on  in  space, 
four  hundred  thousand  miles  a  day,  towards  a  de- 
termined point  among  the  fixed  stars. 

God  is  the  artificer  of  matter.  Not  an  ounce 
of  it  within  the  bounds  of  space  that  he  is  not  up- 
holding, penetrating,  changing,  moulding,  every 
day.  He  deals  with  nothing  else  that  we  can  see. 
He  utters  no  audible  word.  He  prints  with  no 
type.  He  puts  his  lessons  to  us,  all  his  wisdom, 
all  his  warnings,  all  his  eloquence,  all  his  love  that 
outward  nature  holds,  into  matter  as  he  himself 
wields  and  shapes  it.  The  world  is  a  laboratory, 
a  mill,  a  forge,  a  factory,  as  well  as  an  expression 
of  beauty  :  every  particle  of  matter  at  some  time 
passes  through  these  stages  to  be  subject  to  the 
hammers  and  the  acids  and  the  implements  of 
the  Infinite  himself ; —  and  we  have  not  settled  yet 
in  our  high  places  if  labor  is  honorable,  if  we 
do  not  rise  in  worth  and  the  scale  of  humanity  as 
we  get  farther  and  farther  away  from  any  useful 
contact  with  forces  and  things  ! 

We  may  be  told,  however,  that  all  labor  is  hon- 
orable in  the  degree  that  it  embodies  and  sets 
forth  ideas,  and  therefore  that  literature  must 
always  take  precedence  of  the  arts  of  invention, 
because  it  deals  directly  with  ideas,  and  reaches 
the  intellectual  nature  as  an  educating  force  im- 


288      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts. 

mediately.  I  acknowledge  the  principle  that  the 
grades  of  nobleness  in  labor  are  determined  by  the 
amount  of  intellect  involved  in  them,  or  uttered 
through  them.  And  I  maintain  that  the  mechanic 
arts  of  the  last  fifty  years  are  not  humbled  at  all 
before  the  printed  or  spoken  literature  of  the  last 
fifty  years,  as  expressions  of  thought,  imagination, 
the  toil  of  the  highest  intellectual  faculties.  Can 
there  be  any  question  where  the  greatest  amount 
of  original  thought  has  been  shown  during  the  last 
generation,  —  in  the  records  of  Patent-Offices,  or 
in  the  catalogues  of  publications  by  the  chief  book- 
sellers in  Christendom  ? 

When  we  talk  of  sentiment,  tenderness,  aspira- 
tion, pathos,  love,  the  moral  qualities  that  breathe 
through  books,  or  the  musical  creations  of  great 
artists,  and  the  sweetness  of  rhythm  and  the  deli- 
cacy of  form  in  poetry,  we  talk  of  things  which 
cannot  be  measured  with  any  of  the  triumphs  of 
inventive  art. 

But  as  to  pure  force  of  intellect,  I  believe  that 
far  more  has  been  expended  upon  the  world,  in 
the  last  two  or  three  generations,  through  the 
channels  in  which  labor  flows,  than  through  the 
avenues  that  are  esteemed  especially  intellectual. 

What  speech  has  been  made  in  seventy  years, 
which  displays  such  original  triumphs  of  reason 
and  imagination,  which  holds  in  solution  the  re- 
sults of  so  many  weeks  and  months  of  severe 
thinking,  as  the  steam-engine,  even  as  Watt  left  it  ? 
I  doubt  if  there  is  such  a  thing  in  all  literature. 


The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts.      289 

What  volume  of  essays  is  so  new  among  the 
products  of  thought,  is  so  original  as  a  piece  of 
thinking  in  things,  as  the  carpet-loom^  or  the  card- 
ing machine,  that  seems  alive  with  pure  intellect, 
or  the  sewing-machine,  —  I  will  not  say  which  one 
for  fear  of  bombardment,  —  or  the  last  and  bust 
lathe,  which  will  turn  you  out,  as  you  please,  the 
model  for  a  Chinaman's  boot  or  a  marble  fac- 
simile of  Daniel  Webster  ?  Where  will  you  find  a 
stroke  of  statesmanship  to  rival  the  conception 
that  spans  the  St.  Lawrence  with  welded  iron 
tubes,  in  spans  of  a  thousand  feet,  and  bolted  so 
that  the  heaviest  laden  trains  shoot  through  them 
as  on  granite  ?  What  theory,  on  any  large  prob- 
lem of  church,  state,  law,  or  civilization,  has  been 
so  thoroughly  worked  out  and  harmonized  with 
facts,  in  the  last  century,  that  it  can  compare 
as  an  expression  of  sinewy  and  comprehensive 
thought  with  a  model  iron  steamer,  which  mechani- 
cians can  now  build  so  that  it  may  be  suspended 
by  stem  and  stern,  with  all  its  machinery  on 
board,  or  poised  in  the  middle,  leaving  the  ex- 
tremities unsupported,  without  breaking? 

Or  let  me  invite  you,  in  part  through  the  glow- 
ing language  of  another,  to  visit  an  immense  foun- 
dry, and  witness  "  the  costly  preparations  for  some 
great  casting  of  iron,  —  the  bed-plate  of  a  vast 
marine  engine,  for  instance.  The  sooty  work- 
men, at  mine  and  furnace,  have  been  long  at  work 
digging  the  ore  and  blasting  the  iron.  There  it 
lies  corded  in  yonder  piles  of  ugly  crudeness  and 
13  s 


290      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts. 

grim  strength  !  Here,  beneath  this  lofty  roof,  full 
of  rough  and  shapeless  materials,  of  vast  cranes, 
and  monstrous  tackles  and  chains  from  which  the 
world  might  hang,  with  the  dying  light  of  day 
struggling  in  from  windows  in  the  roof,  and  the 
flaming  light  of  furnaces  flashing  up  from  its  floor, 
the  preparations  have  been  and  are  still  going 
on !  For  months  the  skilful  workmen,  in  the 
moulding-sand  that  forms  the  floor,  have  been 
busy,  with  firm  and  cunning  fingers,  forming  the 
mould,  with  every  mortise,  bolt-hole,  groove,  stay, 
inclination,  anxiously  adjusted  and  arranged ; 
and  there  it  lies  buried  in  the  ground.  Near  by, 
the  furnaces,  heated  seven  times  hot,  hold  the 
obdurate  metal  seething  and  boiling  in  their  hell- 
ish jaws.  From  minute  to  minute  the  doors  are 
opened,  and  out  flows  —  amid  flames  and  sparks 
that  threaten  the  destruction  of  the  building,  and 
amid  which  the  workmen  stand  as  unharmed  and 
un terrified  as  the  three  men  that  walked  in  the 
prophet's  furnace  —  buckets  of  molten  iron,  that 
are  borne  with  staggering  steps  and  emptied  into 
the  vast  caldron,  from  which  the  mould  is  finally 
to  be  filled.  The  long-expected  and  anxiously 
prepared-for  moment  at  length  approaches,  nay, 
it  is  precipitated  ;  for  the  door  of  the  reservoir 
leaks  with  the  immense  weight  of  its  raging  con- 
tents. '  At  a  word  the  channels  for  the  molten 
iron  are  cleared ;  the  foreman  stands  at  the  burst- 
ing gate  ;  the  workmen,  with  bars  and  tools  suited 
each  to  its  end,  take  their  posts;  while  the  master, 


The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  A rts.      29 1 

standing  over  the  mould,  and  looking  calmly  but 
earnestly  round,  finally  gives  the  signal!  Up 
flies  the  gate,  forth  leaps  the  furious  current,  the 
channels  blaze  with  fire,  the  mould  trembles  and 
smokes  with  the  rushing  contents,  the  loosened 
gates  explode  from  their  tubes  ;  but  silence  and 
suspense  hold  the  assembly  yet.  The  master 
stands  intently  watching  the  shrews  for  signs  of 
any  superfluity  of  metal.  Perhaps  there  has  been 
miscalculation  and  not  enough !  Perhaps  the 
mighty  weight  has  crushed  the  mould,  and  the 
metal  is  sinking  into  the  ground  !  Perhaps  the 
casting  is  a  failure,  and  the  labor  of  months  is  to 
be  repeated  !  A  moment  must  settle  the  results  of 
a  whole  quarter's  toil ;  the  profits  of  years  of  in- 
dustry are  at  stake  ;  the  pride  of  the  engineer,  the 
suspense  of  the  workmen,  all  feelings  of  sympa- 
thy are  concentrated  in  this  anxious  minute.  But 
lo !  just  here  bubbles  feebly  up  the  tardy  metal, 
rises  a  few  inches  above  the  surface,  and  stops,  — 
not  a  gallon  of  metal  to  spare,  not  a  hundred 
pounds  over,  in  a  casting  of  forty  tons  !  Success — 
proud,  happy,  glorious  success  —  has  crowned  the 
arduous  work  ! "  * 

Think  of  that  adjustment  of  means  to  ends, 
that  careful,  thoughtful  insurance  of  harmony, 
symmetry,  and  strength,  in  the  immense  product ! 
How  many  novels  have  been  written  in  the  Eng- 
lish tongue,  since  foundries  like  this  first  saw  the 
light, — how  many  plays  have  been  wrought  upon 

*  Bellows's  "  Restatements  of  Christian  Doctrines, "  p.  298. 


292      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts. 

paper !  And  what  number  of  novels,  do  you  sup- 
pose, have  shown  a  plan  so  broad,  a  mould  so 
strong,  a  relation  of  parts  so  cunning  and  exact, 
a  proportion  of  power  so  admirable,  that  they  can 
as  intellectual  achievements  compare  with  such 
a  casting  of  a  bed-plate  ?  There  is  hardly  a  novel 
written  in  English  now,  whose  work  does  not  look 
flawed,  distorted,  pinched,  or  "sloppy"  in  the 
contrast. 

Turn  from  the  department  of  pure  literature  to 
the  government  of  the  world,  and  you  shall  see 
new  testimony  to  the  amount  of  intellect  that  has 
been  poured  through  the  mechanic  arts  in  the 
last  fifty  or  sixty  years.  Great  mechanics  have 
done  far  more  in  that  time  than  great  politicians, 
great  statesmen,  or  great  generals  to  affect  per- 
manently the  fortune  of  nations. 

Men  in  the  places  of  civil  power  think  that 
they  chiefly  mould  or  modify  public  interests,  by 
their  direct  dealing  through  votes,  speeches,  and 
schemes  with  a  nation's  laws  and  life.  But  how- 
ever much  they  do,  it  is  the  movement  of  the 
great  social  forces  below  political  ones  —  the 
drift  of  things  —  that  determines  good  or  evil  for 
a  people.  And  these  social  forces  are  guided, 
intensified,  or  changed  very  much  by  the  control 
gained  and  established  over  the  powers  of  nature. 
Think  what  wonders  the  mechanic  arts  of  locomo- 
tion have  wrought  on  colonization  the  last  forty 
years,  —  the  moving  of  myriads  from  one  country 
and  clime  to  another  without  serious  social  jar ! 


The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts.      293 

Think  how  the  mechanical  aids  of  industry,  in- 
creasing many  fold  the  wealth  of  the  world,  have 
raised  labor  into  power  in  the  state,  and  stealth- 
ily modified  constitutions  to  meet  and  fit  the  new 
conditions !  It  would  be  impossible,  hereafter, 
for  France  to  sink  to  such  a  social  condition  as 
she  was  in  during  the  two  generations  that  pre- 
ceded, caused,  and  justified  the  French  Revolu- 
tion of  1789.  It  was  not  the  eloquence  of  Grey 
and  Brougham,  but  the  declamation  of  the  steam- 
engine,  that  produced  the  passage  of  the  Reform 
Bill  a  generation  ago  in  England  ;  and  the  ma- 
chinery of  the  island  is  now  pulling,  straining, 
altering  her  social  charter,  her  whole  system  of 
church  and  state,  with  a  leverage  and  a  piston 
and  pulley  power  which  are  resistless,  in  favor 
of  larger  representation  of  the  people  who  crowd 
the  factories  and  feed  the  furnaces  and  looms. 
Even  in  morals  the  effect  of  improvements 
wrought  by  mechanical  skill  is  often  wonderful, 
and  puts  to  shame  the  intentional  consecrated 
labor  of  moralists  themselves.  In  the  countries 
where  fires  are  necessary  for  a  large  part  of 
the  year,  think  what  beneficent  influence  on 
family  life,  on  temper,  on  the  spiritual  as  well  as 
real  atmosphere  of  home,  the  invention  must 
have  been  that  utterly  prevents  smoky  chim- 
neys !  And  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  cheap 
production  of  gas  and  the  kindling  of  the  gas- 
light in  the  streets  of  cities  have  directly  prevented 
more  crime,  in  the  last  twenty  years,  than  half 


294      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts. 

the  sheriffs  and  half  the  philanthropists  have  suc- 
ceeded in  doing.  In  the  Book  of  Job  we  read 
of  the  morning  light  taking  hold  of  the  ends  of 
the  earth  and  shaking  the  wicked  out  of  it,  — 
majestic  poetry  clothing  thus  in  imagery  the 
hostility  of  light  and  crime.  And  now  in  the 
streets  of  great  cities  the  ruffian  cannot  say, 
"  Surely  the  darkness  shall  cover  me,"  for,  as  by 
the  presence  of  God,  "  the  night  shall  be  light 
about  him,"  and  a  noontide  safety  is  poured  over 
walks  that  border  the  lairs  of  iniquity. 

Geologists  tell  us  that  in  some  districts  of  the 
earth  the  whole  land,  mountains  and  all,  from  the 
shore-line,  is  slowly  rising,  borne  up  by  quiet 
continental  forces  underneath.  We  conceive  the 
inward  energies  of  the  planet  as  acting  through 
volcanic  throes  and  earthquake  fits  of  passion 
solely,  which  are  nothing  to  the  noiseless  power 
that  works  below  the  earthquakes,  and  lifts  the 
rock-foundations  of  an  empire.  So  in  the  moral 
raising  of  society,  through  the  progress  of  me- 
chanic art,  ennobling  labor,  spreading  comfort, 
giving  power  to  the  people,  befriending  the  good 
causes  and  interests  of  civilization  in  a  thousand 
subtile  ways,  we  notice  the  play  of  the  continen- 
tal moral  forces  working  from  beneath  the  explo- 
sive ones,  and  bearing  up  more  and  more  of 
society  in  light  and  better  air. 

In  whatever  point  of  view,  from  whichever  side 
we  study  it,  the  fact  appears  that  the  human  race, 
as  a  whole,  were  made  to  be  workers  in  matter,  to 


The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts.      295 

change  it  into  new  forms,  to  get  education  in 
doing  it,  to  express  their  education  again  in  do- 
ing it,  to  advance  civilization  thus,  and  in  such 
ways  to  rise  into  fellowship  with  the  Omnipotent 
chemist,  geometer,  and  mechanician  of  the  world. 

Every  man  who  is  fixed  for  life  in  an  occupa- 
tion ought  to  have  the  habit  of  regarding  it  at 
times  from  the  highest  point  of  view,  and  espe- 
cially of  rising  into  a  feeling  of  kindred  with  the 
illustrious  masters  of  it.  If  a  man  is  a  preacher, 
let  him  consecrate  some  hours  by  the  thought 
of  the  men  —  Mason  and  Chalmers  and  Chan- 
ning,  Fenelon  and  Bourdaloue,  Luther  and  Knox, 
Bernard,  Chrysostom,  and  mighty  Paul  —  who 
have  worn  the  same  robe  on  souls  electric  with 
the  Holy  Ghost.  And  let  the  thought  that  he  is 
of  that  lineage  inspire  him,  whatever  be  the  pro- 
portions of  his  gifts,  and  keep  him  true. 

If  he  is  a  teacher,  let  him  feel  what  his  profes- 
sion, as  a  whole,  is  doing  for  the  world  to-day, 
and,  remembering  that  Agassiz  is  daily  employed 
in  it,  and  heroes  like  Dr.  Howe,  and  that  the 
name  of  Thomas  Arnold  glows  on  its  roll,  let 
a  consecrated  pride  in  its  worth  and  its  names 
animate  his  will  and  encourage  his  heart. 

If  he  is  a  merchant,  let  him  not  fail  to  feel,  now 
and  then,  that  his  warehouse  or  office  is  one  tile 
in  the  vast  edifice  of  credit,  interblended  interest, 
and  confidence,  whose  arches  span  from  London 
to  Canton,  which,  more  than  any  other  influence, 
knits  the  nations  into  unity  ;  and  let  him  vow  that 
his  character,  by  its  looseness  or  its  knavery,  shall 


296      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts. 

not  be  an  element  of  danger  or  decay  in  that 
noble  pile. 

And  if  he  is  a  mechanic,  let  him  think  how 
the  globe  was  wrought  out  on  the  creative  wheel 
through  patient  and  expectant  ages  when  man  was 
not,  but  was  foreseen  in  the  creative  thought.  Let 
him  think  of  constructive  toil  as 

"  A  blessing  now,  —  a  curse  no  more  ; 
Since  He  whose  name  we  breathe  with  awe 

The  coarse  mechanic  vesture  wore,  — 

A  poor  man  toiling  with  the  poor ; 
In  labor,  as  in  prayer,  fulfilling  the  same  law." 

And  let  him  study  the  biographies  of  the  great 
mortal  masters  of  the  mechanic  powers,  the  stal- 
wart thinkers  in  God's  dialect  of  force,  —  Watt 
and  Franklin,  Arkwright  and  Cartwright,  Whitney, 
Fulton,  Whittemore,  Stephenson,  and  Brunei.  Lit- 
erary men  read  the  stories  of  their  struggles,  their 
wrestle  with  the  great  secrets  of  nature,  like  Jacob 
with  the  Spirit,  refusing  to  let  go  till  the  blessing 
was  yielded,  their  single-eyed  devotedness  to  their 
track  and  their  truth,  with  admiration  and  with 
touched  hearts.  How  should  they  who  are  of 
the  same  calling  follow  the  record  of  their  careers 
and  triumphs  !  There  should  be  niches  in  every 
mechanic's  memory,  where,  through  faithful  and 
repeated  readings  of  their  lives,  these  spirits 
should  stand  as  noble  monitors  and  friends. 

The  papers  tell  us  that,  next  week,  commis- 
sioners will  be  chosen  to  represent  the  Pacific 
Coast  at  the  World's  Fair  at  London  next  May. 


The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts.      297 

If  we  were  to  choose  from  the  whole  planet  a 
score  of  men  to  represent  us  on  some  other  globe 
or  in  some  other  system  in  a  great  human  fair  of 
the  universe,  it  would  not  be  kings,  dukes,  prime- 
ministers,  the  richest  men,  we  should  appoint  as 
ambassadors  to  show  what  our  race  is,  and  what 
it  is  doing  here,  but  the  great  thinkers,  artists, 
and  workers,  the  thinkers  in  ink,  the  thinkers  in 
stone  and  color,  the  thinkers  in  force  and  homely 
matter,  the  men  who  are  bringing  the  globe  up 
towards  the  Creator's  imagination  and-  purpose ; 
and  on  this  mission  the  leaders  of  mechanic  art 
would  go  side  by  side  with  Shakespeare  and  Mil- 
ton, Angelo  and  Wren,  Newton  and  Cuvier. 

In  England,  now,  they  are  preparing  statues  of 
Brunei  the  engineer,  and  the  Stephensons,  father 
and  son,  to  be  finished  and  erected  about  the 
same  time  with  those  of  Macaulay  and  Havelock. 
The  nation  is  beginning  to  bow  to  the  occupa- 
tions and  the  genius  that  have  added  to  her 
power  ten  thousand  fold,  —  is  beginning  to  bow 
to  labor,  noble,  glorious,  sacred  labor,  which,  in 
partnership  with  the  thoughts  of  genius,  is  chang- 
ing the  face  of  the  planet  as  by  a  wand  of  miracle, 
preparing  in  no  slight  degree  the  advent  of  His 
kingdom,  and  fulfilling  His  deep  purposes,  who 
labored  on  the  planet  myriads  of  years  before 
Adam  was  moulded,  a  breathing  statue  from  the 
dust,  and  who  now  calls  man  to  partnership  in 
his  plans. 

And  how  can  we  honor  labor  and  the  arts  that 
raise  it,  most  successfully  ?  By  right  thoughts  of 


298      The  Earth  and  the  Mechanic  Arts. 

it ;  by  ennobling  ourselves,  if  any  form  of  it  is 
our  calling  ;  by  erecting  statues  of  its  great  repre- 
sentatives in  our  hearts  ;  and  by  the  fervor,  the 
duties,  and  the  sacrifices  of  patriotism  now. 

aFor  our  national  struggle  is  not  only  for  a  capi- 
tal city,  for  the  old  geography,  for  the  Mississippi 
and  Missouri,  for  the  hallowed  parchment  of  the 
Constitution,  it  is  also  for  the  dignity  of  labor. 
The  daggers  of  conspiracy  strike  at  that.  Through 
the  rent  Constitution,  through  the  holes  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  which  they  scorn, 
the  traitors  seek  to  stab  the  doctrine  of  the  human- 
ity and  rights  of  the  classes  everywhere  that  toil. 
They  proclaim,  at  the  mouths  of  their  artillery,  that 
the  state  is  built  right  when  votes  are  restricted, 
and  when  lords  stand  high  and  insolent  on  the 
trampled  muscles  of  those  that  toil.  Their  three- 
barred  flag,  emblem  of  infamy  in  every  thread,  is 
symbol  also  of  this  apostasy.  Let  us  accept  the 
challenge.  Let  us  see  in  the  stripes  and  colors 
of  the  dear  old  national  banner  the  streaming  rep- 
resentative of  the  rights  and  worth  of  labor  ;  and 
let  every  bared  arm  and  swelling  muscle  swear 
fealty  to  it  now,  with  the  deeper  passion.  Let  it 
be  ready,  if  need  comes,  to  throw  down  the  ham- 
mer for  it  and  take  the  sword.  And  let  the  crime 
against  it  be  avenged,  as  it  only  can  be,  by  the 
smiting  down  of  every  tattered  rag  of  the  rebel- 
lion, before  the  spirit  and  valor  of  men  who  will 
suffer  no  empire  to  be  founded  in  America  on 
perjury,  treason,  and  insult  to  toil ! 

1861. 


IX. 

DANIEL  WEBSTER. 

ON  one  of  the  mountains  of  New  Hampshire, 
in  the  Franconia  Pass,  hangs  a  great  stone 
face,  which  tens  of  thousands  of  tourists  from  all 
parts  of  the  country  have  looked  up  to  with  awe. 
Many,  doubtless,  who  now  hear  me  have  seen  it, 
and  remember  how  they  felt  when  first 

"  The  giant  image  broke  on  them, 
Full  human  profile,  nose  and  chin  distinct, 

And  fed  at  evening  with  the  blood  of  suns." 

So,  for  many  years,  for  the  full  space  of  a 
generation,  the  brow  and  features  of  one  man 
seemed  to  stand  out  high  and  majestic  from  the 
solid  ridges  of  New  England  character  and  intel- 
lect, —  a  prominent  part  of  its  natural  scenery. 
The  very  name  of  the  man  suggests  the  texture 
and  strength  of  granite  by  the  combination  of  its 
syllables,  —  Daniel  Webster. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  first  time  I  saw  him. 
It  was  on  Bunker  Hill,  the  loth  of  September, 
1840,  at  the  great  Whig  gathering  there  of  twenty 
thousand,  in  the  Harrison  campaign.  Half  a 
dozen  stands  were  erected  on  different  parts  of 


3OO  Daniel  Webster. 

the  field  for  speakers  ;  but,  a  boy  of  fifteen,  I 
was  indifferent  to  all  speaking,  and  was  in  search 
of  the  figure  of  the  great  Senator.  I  was  eager 
to  see  the  fountain-head  of  the  eloquence  we  had 
been  declaiming  at  school.  At  last  I  descried 
on  one  of  the  far-off  platforms  a  mass  of  dingy 
grandeur  which  was  unmistakable,  and  struck 
what  is  called  a  "  bee-line "  for  it  through  the 
crowd.  I  pressed  up  very  near  to  the  platform, 
and  caught  the  flash  from  under  the  thunderous 
brows,  and  saw  a  genial  glow  upon  the  face. 
He  was  introducing  a  tall  Virginian  to  the  living 
mass  around  him.  These  were  the  first  words  I 
heard  :  "  What  shall  I  say  of  you,  my  friend  ? 
This,  gentlemen,  is  Benjamin  Watkins  Leigh  of 
Virginia,  a  Whig  true  to  the  backbone."  Then 
he  slapped  him  on  the  shoulder  with  a  force 
which  proved  that  Mr.  Leigh,  without  question, 
belonged  to  the  class  of  vertebrata  among  poli- 
ticians. 

When  a  shower  suddenly  scattered  the  thou- 
sands, I  managed  to  keep  close  to  Mr.  Webster  as 
he  left  the  field,  seizing  every  opportunity  with  the 
utmost  impudence  to  see  the  play  of  his  features. 
And  at  any  time  after  that  day  I  would  have 
gone  farther  to  look  upon  his  face  than  to  see 
the  Notch  of  the  White  Hills  or  Niagara.  It 
was  my  fortune  to  listen  to  his  great  speech  in 
1842  in  Fanueil  Hall,  after  the  Ashburton  Treaty, 
when  he  flung  back  the  taunts  of  his  party  be- 
cause he  had  remained  in  the  Cabinet  of  Mr.  Tyler. 


Daniel  Webster.  301 

His  oration  on  Bunker  Hill  at  the  completion 
of  the  monument  in  1843  I  listened  to:  I  saw 
him  in  Fanueil  Hall  in  November,  1844,  on  the 
evening  of  the  day  that  brought  the  news  of  Mr. 
Clay's  defeat.  The  vast  room,  dimly  lighted, 
was  packed  with  men  in  a  quite  sombre  mood. 
And  when  the  swarthy  statesman  stepped  upon 
the  stage,  and  suppressed  the  cheers  that  hailed 
him  with  the  opening  words,  proudly  declaimed, 

"  What  though  the  field  be  lost ! 
All  is  not  lost ;  the  unconquerable  will, 
And  study  of  revenge,  immortal  hate, 
And  courage  never  to  submit  or  yield, 
And  what  is  else  not  to  be  overcome  ! 
That  glory  never  shall  his  wrath  or  might 
Extort  from  me," 

the  scene  was  a  grander  representation  than  any 
picture  by  Martin  of  the  council  which  Milton 
paints,  when  the  defeated  spirits  gathered  to  hear 
their  dread  commander,  who, 

"  Above  the  rest 

In  shape  and  gesture  proudly  eminent, 
Stood  like  a  tower." 

Afterwards  in  1849  I  heard  him  deliver  a  his- 
torical address  on  the  Constitution ;  then  in  1850 
the  speech  in  Boston  when  he  said  that  Massa- 
chusetts must  conquer  her  prejudices ;  after  that 
his  final  speech  in  Fanueil  Hall. 

Vividly  do  I  recall  the  last  time  I  saw  him. 
It  was  a  warm  day  of  the  spring  of  1852.  Mr. 
Webster  was  walking  very  feebly  along  Washington 
Street,  Boston.  His  hat  was  pulled  low  over  his 


302  Daniel  Webster. 

brow,  and  he  seemed  anxious  to  escape  the  notice 
of  the  crowd  that  gathered  to  follow  him.  He 
wore  an  olive-green  frock-coat,  and  around  his 
neck  and  shoulders  hung  a  massive  gold  chain. 
Possibly  you  will  like  to  hear  the  inscriptions 
on  its  clasp.  On  one  side  was  engraved,  "To 
Daniel  Webster,  the  Defender  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, and  the  Advocate  of  the  Union."  On  the 
other  side,  "  Manufactured  by  Woodruff  and 
Addison,  San  Francisco,  California,  September 
29,  1849."  In  reply  to  the  letter  which  presented 
it  he  wrote  thus  about  -  California :  "At  last  we 
have  seen  our  country  stretch  from  sea  to  sea, 
and  a  new  highway  opened  across  the  continent 
from  us  to  our  fellow-citizens  on  the  shore  of  the 
Pacific.  Far  as  they  have  gone,  they  are  yet 
within  the  protection  of  the  Union,  and  ready, 
I  doubt  not,  to  join  us  all  in  its  defence  and 
support.  [Yes,  we  are  ready  still !  ]  They  are 
pursuing  a  new  and  absorbing  interest.  While 
their  Eastern  brethren  continue  to  be  engaged 
in  agriculture,  manufactures,  commerce,  naviga- 
tion, and  the  fisheries,  they  are  exploring  a  region 
whose  wealth  surpasses  fiction.  They  are  gath- 
ering up  treasure  in  a  manner  and  in  a  degree 
hitherto  unknown,  at  the  feet  of  inaccessible 
mountains  and  ^long  those  streams 

'  Whose  foam  is  amber  and  their  gravel  gold.' 

Over  them  and  over  us  stands  the  broad  arch 
of  the  Union,  and  long  may  it  stand,  as  firm  as 


Daniel  Webster.  303 

the  arches  of  heaven,  and  as  beautiful  as  the  bow 
which  is  set  in  the  clouds ! " 

The  old  man,  ten  years  before,  had  saved  his 
country  by  the  Ashburton  Treaty  from  the  desola- 
tion of  war  on  the  easternmost  frontier.  It  was 
fit  that,  as  he  walked  in  the  streets  of  the  oldest 
city  of  the  Union,  a  few  months  before  his  death, 
he  should  wear  a  decoration  to  associate  his 
genius  with  this  youngest  city  of  the  extreme 
West,  the  farthest  limit  of  the  empire  which,  so 
long  as  it  obeyed  and  revered  the  Constitution, 
could  not  outrun  the  reach  of  his  love. 

Then  came  the  solemn  Sunday,  October  24, 
1852,  and  the  tolling  bells  to  tell  us  in  Boston, 
before  church-time,  of  the  death  in  Marshfield  :  — 

"  What  ails  the  morning,  that  the  misty  sun 
Looks  wan  and  troubled  in  the  autumn  air, 
Dark  over  Marshfield  ?     'T  was  the  minute-gun : 
God !  has  it  come  that  we  foreboded  there  ? " 

"  This  mighty  spirit  is  eclipsed ;  this  power 
Hath  passed  from  day  to  darkness  ;  to  whose  hour 
Of  light  no  likeness  is  bequeathed." 

And  speedily  was  reported  to  us  there,  speedily  to 
the  whole  land,  too,  the  final  scene  in  the  states- 
man's sick-chamber.  We  speak  of  the  death  of  a 
great  man  in  old  age  sometimes  as  the  wreck  of  a 
weather-stained  bark  on  pitiless  rocks,  sometimes 
as  the  furling  of  tired  sails  in  quiet  port.  Neither 
of  these  images  fits  that  death-scene.  Neither 
of  them  is  profoundly  Christian.  The  calm  ful- 
filment of  every  duty,  and  the  reining  up  of  the 
faculties  to  obey  the  mastery  of  the  will;  the 


304  Daniel  Webster. 

desire  to  know  when  the  experience  of  dissolu- 
tion was  to  commence ;  the  solemn  tones  of 
prayer,  laden  with  the  riches  of  his  language  and 
humble  with  penitence ;  the  farewell  to  family 
and  friends,  majestic  and  tender,  as  he  felt  that 
he  was  floating  out  beyond  earthly  reckonings 
and  the  outlines  of  human  charts  ;  and  then, 
after  the  broken  ejaculations  of  the  psalm  for  the 
Divine  rod  and  staff,  die  silent  close  !  —  not  a 
wreck  on  the  desolate  coasts  of  mortality,  —  it 
is  we  that  are  on  the  shore,  —  the  fading  rather 
of  a  noble  ship  into  the  mists  that  curtain  the 
horizon,  its  sails  all  set,  bearing  one  great  and 
serene  form  beyond  our  gaze  into  the  ineffable 
light,  and  into  an  experience  where  he  could  say 
more  truly  and  intensely  than  on  earth,  "  I  still 
live !  " 

We  must  now  give  some  minutes  more  particu- 
larly to  his  biography. 

Mr.  Webster  was  born  the  i8th  of  January, 
1782,  in  Salisbury,  N.  H.  When  his  Puritan  fa- 
ther built  his  log-cabin  there,  no  pioneer  hut  sent 
up  any  smoke  or  prayers  into  the  sky  between 
this  clearing  near  the  head-waters  of  the  Merri- 
mack  and  Montreal.  The  young  Daniel  was  born 
in  midwinter,  on  the  frosty  verge  of  Pilgrim  civil- 
ization, under  the  auspices  and  influence  of  the 
North  Star. 

The  name  is  Scotch,  and  the  large  majority  of 
the  Webster  stock  were  of  the  Scottish  type,  — 
of  light  complexion  and  hair,  tall,  slender,  and 


Daniel  Webster.  305 

bony.  But  Daniel's  grandmother  (Bachelder  by 
name)  was  of  the  dark  and  bilious  mould  and 
temperament.  Mr.  Webster  said  in  1840:  "We 
are  all  indebted  to  my  father's  mother  for  a  large 
portion  of  the  little  sense  and  character  that 
belongs  to  us."  The  boy  Daniel  was  of  her  type, 
not  of  the  Scottish  pattern,  —  youngest  and  dark- 
est of  ten  children.  General  Stark  told  him  once 
that  his  complexion  was  admirable  for  a  sol- 
dier, because  burnt  gunpowder  would  not  smutch 
it.  He  never  obtained,  however,  even  amateur 
military  distinction.  When  fifty-four  years  old, 
he  wrote  from  Washington  to  one  of  his  sons 
who  was  disappointed  in  regard  to  a  military 
appointment :  "  We  are  predestinated  not  to  be 
great  in  the  field  of  battle.  I  once  tried  to  be 
captain,  and  failed  ;  and  I  canvassed  a  whole  regi- 
ment to  make  your  uncle  an  adjutant,  and  failed 
also.  We  are  not  the  sons  of  Bellona's  bride- 
groom. Our  battles  are  forensic ;  we  draw  no 
blood  but  the  blood  of  our  clients." 

His  father  had  served  in  the  French  war  and 
in  the  Revolution,  and  on  the  little  farm  in  Salis- 
bury was  engaged  in  a  genuine  Puritan  hand- 
to-hand  fight  with  nature  and  the  wilderness, 
wringing  subsistence  for  a  wife  and  ten  children 
out  of  a  thin  penurious  soil,  and  a  climate  di- 
vided into  three  parts,  —  nine  months  winter, 
two  months  breaking  up  of  winter,  one  month 
setting  in  of  winter. 

There  were  no  luxuries  in  the  farm-house,  and 

T 


306  Daniel  Webster. 

very  few  books.  So  much  the  better.  There 
was  opportunity  for  the  farmer-boy  to  learn  the 
Bible  thoroughly,  and  know  Watts's  Hymns  by 
heart,  and  commit  a  cheap  pamphlet-copy  of 
Pope's  u  Essay  on  Man  "  to  memory,  and  get  a  vig- 
orous appetite  for  knowledge  from  the  annual  visits 
of  the  almanac,  whose  poetry  and  anecdotes  were 
devoured  with  an  eagerness  that  left  a  smack 
on  the  mental  palate.  If  you  want  a  boy  to  have 
tough  mental  fibre  in  after  life,  keep  him  in  child- 
hood on  a  few  strong  books  that  he  must  chew. 

When  he  was  eight  years  old,  he  saw  in  a 
country  shop  a  cotton  handkerchief  with  some- 
thing printed  on  both  sides  of  it.  He  gave  his 
whole  stock  of  hoarded  pennies  to  secure  it,  and 
absorbed  its  contents  that  night  with  his  keen 
dark  eyes,  on  his  father's  kitchen  floor,  by  the 
light  of  the  roaring  chimney-fire.  What  painter 
will  be  first  to  make  that  scene  perpetual  in  our 
country's  history  and  art?  It  was  the  Constitu- 
tion of  the  United  States,  just  then  in  the  dawn 
of  its  beneficent  power  under  the  lead  of  Presi- 
dent Washington,  that  the  New  Hampshire  boy 
was  then  stamping  on  his  brain.  He  told  the 
story  himself  in  1850,  and  archly  said,  "  I  have 
known  more  or  less  of  that  document  ever  since." 
If  a  Californian,  without  excess  of  reverence,  had 
heard  him  say  that,  he  would  have  been  apt  to 
break  out  in  the  Pacific  vernacular,  and  exclaim, 
"  You  bet !  "  Forty  years  from  that  winter  came 
the  great  Hayne  debate.  But  I  would  travel 


Daniel  Webster.  307 

farther  to  see  a  master's  picture  of  the  lad,  read- 
ing the  Constitution  in  the  rude  home  on  the 
edge  of  the  northern  wilderness,  than  to  see 
Healy's  great  painting  of  the  orator  in  the  sena- 
torial struggle  against  the  theory  and  passions  of 
secession  ;  as  I  would  go  farther  to  see  a  pic- 
ture of  the  springs  of  the  Amazon,  far  up  under 
the  cold  white  splinters  of  the  Andes,  than  the 
most  adequate  representation  of  the  imperial 
river's  tropical  tide. 

The  father  had  not  been  able  to  give  any  of  his 
children  an  education.  But  Daniel,  the  youngest, 
was  of  too  feeble  constitution  to  work  much  on  the 
farm,  and  he  was  sent  to  an  academy.  The  father 
pinched  himself  sadly  to  bear  the  burden.  The 
New  Hampshire  hunters  after  moose  buckled  a 
strap  around  the  stomach  in  their  journeys,  and, 
when  provisions  were  very  scant,  drew  the  strap  a 
hole  or  two  tighter  to  prevent  or  deaden  the  gnaw- 
ing of  hunger.  That  is  what  the  old  father  did 
morally,  —  he  drew  the  strap  tighter  to  give  one 
boy  an  education,  and  the  older  sons  said  that 
"  Dan  was  sent  to  school,  that  he  might  know  as 
much  as  the  other  boys." 

He  gained  rapidly  as  a  student,  but  could  never 
get  courage  to  stand  up  and  declaim  before  his 
companion-scholars,  —  a  difficulty  which  did  not 
seem  to  affect  him  seriously  in  the  Senate  in  later 
years.  His  father  then  determined  to  send  him 
to  college.  He  tells  us  what  a  warm  thrill  went 
through  his  frame  when  the  old  man,  toiling  up  a 


308  Daniel  Webster. 

hill  in  the  snow,  broke  the  news  to  him,  and  how 
he  leaned  his  head  on  the  sturdy  father's  shoulder 
and  wept  At  fifteen  he  became  a  freshman  in 
Dartmouth  College  ;  at  nineteen  he  was  graduated, 
all  the  class  feeling  that  he  was  destined  to  emi- 
nence. 

But  when  half  his  college  term  expired  he  deter- 
mined that  Ezekiel,  his  brother  next  older,  should 
be  educated  also.  And  so  rapidly  was  the  purpose 
ca/ried  out  that,  in  the  year  in  which  he  graduated, 
at  nineteen,  Ezekiel,  twenty-one,  entered  college. 

And  then  how  he  worked  for  him,  to  pay  the 
expenses  of  Ezekiel's  college  life !  He  went  to 
Fryeburg,  near  the  White  Mountains,  to  teach 
school  for  thirty  dollars  a  month.  But:  he  found 
that  in  the  winter  evenings  he  could  earn  twenty- 
five  cents  each  by  copying  deeds,  and  that  in  a 
long  evening  he  could  copy  two.  By  this  extra 
toil  he  paid  his  board,  and  saved  his  monthly 
salary  untouched,  to  gallop  with  to  the  tall,  light- 
complexioned,  serious  Ezekiel,  who  in  looks  seems 
to  have  been  a  Scotch  Apollo.  Thirty  years 
afterward  Mr.  Webster  told  a  friend  that  the  ache 
was  n't  out  of  his  fingers  from  that  Fryeburg  copy- 
ing. No,  and  the  nobleness  was  not  out  of  his  soul ! 

In  college  he  seems  to  have  blended  a  very  seri- 
ous intellect  with  a  great  deal  of  humor ;  and  in 
the  letters  that  have  been  preserved  which  he 
wrote  to  college  friends  after  his  graduation,  from 
nineteen  to  twenty-three,  there  is  a  rich  overflow 
of  fun.  He  was  given  to  rhymes.  After  his  first 


Daniel  Webster.  309 

experience  of  the  weed  he  versifies  his  profound 
gratitude  to  its  soothing  quality :  — 

"  Come,  thou,  tobacco,  new-found  friend, 
Come,  and  thy  suppliant  attend, 

In  each  dull  lonely  hour  ; 
And  though  misfortunes  lie  around, 
Thicker  than  hail-stones  on  the  ground, 

I  '11  rest  upon  thy  power. 
Then,  while  the  coxcomb  pert  and  proud, 
The  politician  learned  and  loud, 

Keep  one  eternal  clack, 
I  '11  tread  where  silent  nature  smiles, 
Where  solitude  our  woes  beguiles, 

And  chew  thee,  dear  tobac." 

WEBSTER  (nineteen  years'). 

Young  ladies  in  the  country  seem  to  have  had 
a  tendency  to  fall  in  love  with  the  large-browed, 
sad-eyed,  dark,  and  handsome  youth.  Comte, 
the  French  atheist,  considered  the  eye  imperfect, 
and  thought  the  solar  system  could  be  improved. 
In  a  letter  to  a  friend  the  young  Webster  makes 
this  physiological  proposition  :  "  If  there  should 
be  a  new  edition  of  human  nature,  I  think  it  would 
be  found  expedient  to  give  girls  stronger  ribs,  and 
a  thicker  covering  for  the  heart.  I  say  a  plague 
to  the  girls,  if  they  can't  keep  their  little  beaters  at 
home."  (Suppose  that  nature  should  refrain  from 
making  pale,  olive-skinned  geniuses,  with  noble 
features,  and  eyes  large,  sad,  unworldly,  incapa- 
ble to  be  fathomed.  Perhaps  the  ribs  would  be 
strong  enough,  then.) 

There  certainly  were  no  pecuniary  temptations 
to  great  softness  in  the  left  side  of  the  dam- 


3IO  Daniel  Webster. 

sels  towards  the  young  graduate,  for  he  writes 
thanks  to  one  of  his  classmates  for  his  excellent 
receipt  for  greasing  boots,  but  says,  "mine  need 
other  doctoring,  since  they  admit  not  only  water, 
but  peas  and  gravel-stones." 

"  What  nonsense  lurked  within  the  pate,  oh  ! 

Of  definition-making  Plato, 

Who  sang  in  philosophic  metre, 

'  Man  is  a  rational  and  biped  creature '  1 

Many  do  think,  and  so  do  I, 

Old  codger,  that  you  told  a  lie  ; 

And  yet  perhaps,  you  surly  lout, 

There  is  a  hole  where  you  '11  creep  out ; 
•   Males  you  call  rational,  but  no  man 

E'er  heard  you  say  the  same  of  woman  ! " 

WEBSTER  (twenty-two  years). 

The  richest  records  of  those  years  of  earliest 
manhood  relate  to  his  efforts  to  keep  Ezekiel 
afloat  in  college.  It  was  no  easy  task,  after  the 
Fryeburg  school-keeping  and  deed-copying  were 
over.  Genius  was  maturing,  but  to  a  young  law- 
student  in  New  Hampshire  dollars  came  hard. 
A  farmer's  dollar  is  not  made  as  Mr.  Emerson 
tells  us  the  city  dollar  may  be,  by  the  skit  of  a 
pen;  his  bones  ache  with  the  work  that  earned  it. 
Ezekiel  writes  from  college  :  — 

"  Money,  Daniel,  money.  As  I  was  walking  down  to 
the  office  after  a  letter,  I  happened  to  find  one  cent, 
which  is  the  only  money  I  have  had  since  the  second 
day  after  I  came  on.  It  is  a  fact,  Dan,  that  I  was 
called  on  for  a  dollar,  where  I  owed  it,  and  borrowed 
it,  and  have  borrowed  it  four  times  since,  to  pay  those 
I  borrowed  of.  Yours  without  money, 

"  EZEKIEL." 


Daniel  Webster.  311 

Daniel  writes  from  Salisbury  :  — 

"  I  have  now  by  me  two  cents  in  lawful  federal  cur- 
rency; next  week  I  will  send  them,  if  they  be  all. 
They  will  buy  a  pipe  ;  with  a  pipe  you  can  smoke : 
smoking  inspires  wisdom  ;  wisdom  is  allied  to  forti- 
tude ;  from  fortitude  it  is  but  one  step  to  stoicism;  and 
stoicism  never  pants  for  this  world's  goods.  So  per- 
haps my  two  cents  by  this  process  may  put  you  quite 
at  ease  about  cash.  We  are  at  home  in  the  old  way  ; 
boys  digging  potatoes  with  frozen  fingers,  and  girls 
washing  without  wood.  Write  me  ;  tell  me  your  ne- 
cessities, and  anything  else  you  can  think  of  to  amuse 
me.  Be  a  good  child  ;  mind  your  books  and  strive  to 
learn.  "  DANIEL." 

So  for  two  or  three  years  the  correspondence 
runs  on,  filled  with  records  of  poverty,  affection, 
and  fun.  Daniel's  spirits  seem  always  to  wax 
as  money  wanes.  He  says  he  has  discovered 
what  the  fulcrum  was  which  Archimedes  needed 
to  move  the  world, —  cash.  Once  he  borrowed 
eighty-five  dollars  to  send  to  Ezekiel,  and  it  was 
lost  by  the  stage-driver.  Here  was  a  blow  indeed. 
These  are  the  young  Daniel's  reflections  in  a 
letter  to  his  brother,  —  I  am  afraid  you  will  not 
discover  in  them  a  senatorial  stateliness  or  se- 
verity :  — 

"  Fol  de  dol,  dol  de  dol,  di  dol ; 
I  '11  never  make  money  my  idol ; 
For  away  our  dollars  will  fly  all. 
With  my  friend  and  my  pitcher, 
I  'm  twenty  times  richer 
Than  if  I  make  money  my  idol ; 
Fol  de  dol,  dol  de  dol,  di  dol !  » 


312  Daniel  Webster. 

Through  all  he  had  a  presentiment  of  coming 
fortune.  In  another  letter  he  writes:  "Zeke,  I 
don't  believe  but  that  Providence  will  do  well  for 
us  yet  We  shall  live,  and  live  comfortably." 

He  did  see  Ezekiel  through  his  troubles.  He 
helped  him  into  position,  fame,  and  competence. 
Ezekiel  became  one  of  the  first  lawyers  of  New 
Hampshire,  and  one  of  the  noblest,  as  he  was  one 
of  the  most  majestic  men  of  New  England.  Mr. 
Webster  always  spoke  of  him  as  the  most  com- 
manding and  imposing  person  he  had  ever  seen. 
Until  Ezekiel  was  comfortably  established,  the 
two  brothers  had  but  one  aim,  one  purse,  one 
welfare,  and  one  hope.  Their  love  was  as  that 
of  David  and  Jonathan,  "passing  the  love  of 
women." 

In  1804  Mr.  Webster  went  to  Boston  as  a  law- 
student,  and  was  a  poverty-stricken  youth  there, 
where  fifteen  years  later  his  income  was  over 
fifteen  thousand  a  year,  —  a  sum  equal  to  more 
than  double  that  amount  to-day. 

In  1807  he  opened  an  office  in  Portsmouth, 
N.  H.  I  was  a  school-boy  in  Portsmouth  thirty 
years  ago  ;  and  people  then  told  with  affectionate 
pride  of  the  young  lawyer  with  the  slender  frame 
and  splendid  eyes ;  and  how  he  used  to  im- 
provise the  most  humorous  stories  for  children, 
about  people  that  passed  by  the  window;  and 
how  superbly  he  read  Shakespeare  in  evening  cir- 
cles;  and  what  a  powerful  opponent  the  great 
Jeremiah  Mason  found  him  in  the  courts ;  and 


Daniel  Webster.  313 

how  Mr.  Mason  used  to  say  that  never  was  such 
an  actor  lost. to  the  stage  as  he  would  have  made 
had  he  chosen  to  turn  his  talents  for  humor  and 
mimicry  that  way. 

Six  years  he  served  at  the  New  Hampshire  bar, 
and  was  then  sent  to  Congress,  at  thirty-one  years 
of  age,  in  1813. 

Clay,  Calhoun,  Lowndes,  Pickering,  Gaston, 
Forsyth,  were  the  commanding  names  there.  Mr. 
Webster  had  never  before  been  a  member  of  a 
deliberative  assembly.  He  had  not  studied  the 
ropes  of  that  ship.  He  never  was  a  member  of 
any  State  government,  except  for  ten  days  in  the 
Massachusetts  Legislature,  and  then  he  introduced 
and  carried  a  bill  that  no  man  should  catch  trout 
in  the  State  in  any  other  way  than  by  hook  and 
line.  At  one  bound,  when  he  first  took  the  floor 
in  Congress,  he  put  himself  in  the  first  rank  of 
American  parliamentary  speech  and  thought. 
His  address  on  the  war-question  was  so  weighty 
with  historical  knowledge  and  temperate  logic ;  it 
was  so  lofty  and  calm  in  tone,  so  free  from  rant 
and  "  splurge,"  so  fit  to  go  into  permanent  litera- 
ture as  a  piece  of  strong  and  decisive  writing  ;  it 
was  arranged  with  so  much  tact  and  uttered  with 
such  dignified  force,  that  Chief  Justice  Marshall 
made  the  prophecy  that  the  new  speaker  would 
become  among  the  very  first,  if  not  the  first 
statesman  of  America.  And  Mr.  Lowndes  said, 
"  The  North  has  not  his  equal,  nor  the  South  his 
superior." 


3 14  Daniel  Webster. 

Two  terms  he  served  in  the  House,  and  then,  in 
1816,  removed  to  Boston  with  his  family  and  de- 
voted himself  to  the  profession  of  law.  In  1818, 
when  thirty-six,  he  argued  in  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States  the  Dartmouth  College  case, 
and  won  a  position  as  a  great  constitutional 
lawyer,  not  merely  of  the  first  rank,  but  of  a  new 
type.  In  1820,  at  thirty-eight,  he  sounded  a  new 
note  in  American  literature,  by  his  Plymouth  ora- 
tion on  the  second  centennial  anniversary  of  the 
landing  of  the  Pilgrims, 

I  once  heard  a  Yankee  farmer  compare  Mr.  Clay 
and  Mr.  Webster  thus  :  "  I  Ve  heerd  'em  both  : 
with  Mr.  Clay  the  hearing  on 't  is  more  than  the 
reading  on 't,  but  with  Mr.  Webster  the  reading  on 't 
is  enough  sight  more  than  the  hearing  on  't."  In 
Plymouth  the  old  citizens  will  tell  you,  to-day,  how 
sublime  the  spectacle  was,  when  Mr.  Webster, 
towards  the  close  of  the  address,  uttered  his  de- 
nunciation of  the  slave-trade  :  "  In  the  sight  of 
our  law  the  African  slave-trader  is  a  pirate  and  a 
felon  ;  and  in  the  sight  of  Heaven  an  offender  far 
beyond  the  ordinary  depth  of  human  guilt.  If 
there  be,  within  the  extent  of  our  knowledge  or 
influence,  any  participation  in  this  traffic,  let  us 
pledge  ourselves  here  upon  the  rock  of  Plymouth 
to  extirpate  and  destroy  it.  It  is  not  fit  that  the 
land  of  the  Pilgrims  should  bear  the  shame  longer. 
I  hear  the  sound  of  the  hammer,  I  see  the  smoke 
of  the  furnaces  where  manacles  and  fetters  are 
still  forged  for  human  limbs.  I  see  the  visages  of 


Daniel   Webster.  315 

those  who  by  stealth  and  at  midnight  labor  in 
this  work  of  hell,  foul  and  dark,  as  may  become 
the  artificers  of  such  instruments  of  misery  and 
torture.  Let  that  spot  be  purified,  or  let  it  cease 
to  be  of  New  England.  Let  it  be  purified,  or  let 
it  be  set  aside  from  the  Christian  world  ;  let  it  be 
put  out  of  the  circle  of  human  sympathies  and 
human  regards,  and  let  civilized  man  henceforth 
have  no  communion  with  it."  He  stood  in  front 
of  the  high  pulpit  to  utter  his  address.  The  pul- 
pit was  filled  with  clergymen.  Soon  he  turned 
half  round,  extended  his  hands,  and  lifted  his 
blazing  eye  to  the  preachers  that  were  leaning 
over,  and  said  in  tones,  such  as  Moses  might  have 
spoken,  and  with  a  look  such  as  Moses  might 
have  worn,  fresh  from  the  awful  holiness  of  Sinai : 
"  I  invoke  the  ministers  of  our  religion,  that  they 
proclaim  its  denunciation  of  these  crimes,  and 
add  its  solemn  sanctions  to  the  authority  of  hu- 
man laws.  If  the  pulpit  be  silent,  whenever  or 
wherever  there  may  be  a  sinner  bloody  with  this 
guilt  within  the  hearing  of  its  voice,  the  pulpit  is 
false  to  its  trust." 

Alas  for  the  perishableness  of  eloquence !  It 
is  the  only  thing  in  the  higher  walks  of  human 
creativeness  that  passes  away.  The  statue  lives 
after  the  sculptor  dies,  as  sublime  as  when  his 
chisel  left  it.  St.  Peter's  is  a  perpetual  memorial 
and  utterance  of  the  great  mind  of  Angelo.  The 
Iliad  is  as  fresh  to-day  as  twenty-five  centuries 
ago.  The  picture  may  grow  richer  with  years. 


316  Daniel  Webster, 

But  great  oratory,  the  most  delightful  and  mar- 
vellous of  the  expressions  of  mortal  power,  passes 
and  dies  with  the  occasion.  It  is 

"  Like  the  snowfall  on  a  river, 
A  moment  white,  then  gone  forever. " 

But  the  reading  of  this  address  was  as  "  great " 
as  the  "  hearing  "  of  it.  It  seemed  like  the  utter- 
ance of  an  incarnate  century.  Old  John.  Adams, 
then  more  than  fourscore,  wrote  to  him  :  "  Mr. 
Burke  is  no  longer  entitled  to  the  praise,  the 
most  consummate  orator  of  modern  times.  The 
address  enters  more  perfectly  into  the  spirit  of 
New  England  than  any  production  I  ever  read. 
It  ought  to  be  read  at  the  end  of  every  century, 
and  indeed  of  every  year  forever  and  ever.  It 
will  be  read  five  hundred  years  hence  with  as 
much  rapture  as  it  was  heard." 

The  sentences  may  be  printed,  word  matched 
with  word  and  thought  linked  to  thought  in  per- 
fect sequence,  caught  by  the  nimble  cunning  of  ste- 
nography ;  even  the  punctuation,  each  semicolon 
and  every  stop,  may  be  arrested  and  made  per- 
petual. But  the  cadence  and  the  tones,  the  swells 
and  sweeps  and  subsidence  of  feeling,  the  ter- 
ror and  the  pathos,  the  vivid  poetry  of  gesture 
and  attitude  and  eye,  —  the  living  lightning  that 
poured  through  words  from  the  deeps  of  the  soul, 
from  the  mystic  deeps  of  spirit,  —  all  this  is  evan- 
escent as  the  lightning.  Even  music  may  be 
immortal  here.  The  symphony  can  be  raised, 
generation  after  generation,  from  its  dumb  signs. 


Daniel  Webster.  317 

The  cavatina  and  the  chorus  may  be  retranslated, 
by  adequate  voices,  age  after  age.  But  the  orator 
in  his  sovereign  oration,  —  Demosthenes  speaking 
for  the  crown,  Cicero  against  Verres,  Massillon 
over  the  body  of  Louis  XIV.,  Sheridan  denouncing 
Hastings,  Webster  pouring  out  appeals  massive 
and  gorgeous  for  the  integrity  of  his  country, — 
each  of  these  is  an  organ  shedding  a  music  which 
can  never  be  played  again. 

In  1822  Mr.  Webster,  then  forty,  was  chosen 
Representative  to  Congress  from  the  city  of  Bos- 
ton. During  the  next  six  years  he  made  his  cele- 
brated speeches  on  the  Greek  question  and  on  the 
Panama  mission ;  his  oration  at  the  laying  of 
the  corner-stone  of  Bunker  Hill  Monument,  in 
presence  of  Lafayette,  and  his  eulogy  on  Adams 
and  Jefferson;  his  great  speeches  on  the  Tariff 
and  the  Judiciary  in  Congress,  and  among  other 
important  arguments  in  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States,  the  splendid,  novel,  and  trium- 
phant argument  in  favor  of  a  citizen  of  Georgia,  by 
which  he  broke  down  a  monopoly,  in  the  State  of 
New  York,  of  certain  rights  within  their  waters, 
and  maintained  the  ground  that  the  commerce 
of  the  country,  under  the  Constitution,  was  «'  a 
unit, "  so  that  the  rights  of  ship-owners  of  all 
sections  were  equal  in  all  waters  of  the  Union. 
New  York  was  beaten  and  Georgia  triumphant, 
although  every  court  of  the  Empire  State  had  de- 
cided in  favor  of  its  State  rights.  But  New  York 
did  not  call  a  convention,  or  threaten  to  secede. 


3i8  Daniel  Webster. 

These  eight  years,  from  1820  to  1828,  were 
Mr.  Webster's  happiest  years.  The  range  of  his 
powers  had  been  exhibited.  He  was  on  the  way 
to  a  large  fortune.  He  was  in  full  health.  He 
was  happy  in  the  affections  of  a  devoted  family. 
He  had  risen  to  the  head  of  different  professions 
which  seem  to  require  powers  that  one  would 
think  cannot  be  joined  in  one  man. 

It  is  not  for  me,  to-night,  to  speak  of  Mr.  Web- 
ster's party-position,  or  to  give  any  opinion  upon 
the  questions  of  tariff,  bank,  or  treasury  upon 
which  he  was  so  widely  at  issue  with  other  honest 
and  eminent  men.  I  am  to  speak  now  of  his 
genius.  The  remarkable  fact  in  his  genius  was 
that  he  was  so  eminent  in  different  and  rival 
spheres.  In  the  fulness  of  his  powers  he  was 
master  of  the  best  method  of  speaking  to  a  jury, 
of  the  best  method  of  speech  to  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  nation,  of  the  most  fitting  style  of 
address  to  a  great  popular  audience  on  a  com- 
manding anniversary,  of  the  highest  style  of  par- 
liamentary debate,  and  of  the  eloquence  most 
pertinent  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States. 

His  leading  brethren  at  the  bar  have  remarked 
this,  that  the  lawyer  did  not  hurt  the  statesman, 
nor  the  statesman  the  lawyer.  What  man  of  all 
the  great  names  of  dominant  Englishmen  in  the 
last  hundred  years  has  been  first  in  the  House  of 
Commons  and  first  in  the  highest  English  courts? 
It  has  been  felt  there  that  supremacy  in  one  de- 
partment is  unfitted  for  supremacy  in  the  other. 


Daniel  Webster.  319 

He  seemed  to  be  like  a  monster  cannon, — 
good  for  a  jubilee  when  it  is  eloquent  roar  that  is 
needed,  good  for  the  field  when  it  is  a  sixty-four- 
pound  shot  that  must  be  sent  to  plough  through 
the  battalions  of  the  foe.  Yet  this  was  not  due 
to  a  remarkable  flexibility  or  versatility  of  genius 
and  faculty  in  Mr.  Webster. 

If  one  could  reach  the  pole,  he  would  stand  at 
the  meeting-point  of  all  the  lines  of  longitude ; 
he  could  turn  at  pleasure,  and  by  a  few  steps 
enter  Europe  or  America  or  Asia.  Mr.  Webster 
stood  at  the  focus  of  many  lines  of  intellectual 
power  and  utterance,  at  the  meeting-point  of 
popular,  forensic,  statesmanlike,  senatorial  oratory 
and  influence. 

Mr.  Webster's  eloquence  was  always  founded 
on  facts  and  the  broadest  view  of  facts.  It  was 
not  a  display  of  sensibility  or  imagination  or 
speculative  skill.  Nothing  is  more  dry  than 
facts  given  by  items,  summed  up  by  addition, 
when  the  mind  is  enslaved  to  them  and  stands 
below  them.  Nothing  is  more  winning  and  fasci- 
nating than  facts  set  in  broad  lights  by  a  mind 
that  masters  a  large  field  of  them  and  stands 
above  them.  The  country  looks  prosaic  when 
you  trudge  slowly  through  it,  rod  by  rod  :  see 
it  from  the  mountain-side,  and  you  have  the 
gorgeous  colors  of  poetry  poured  at  once  over 
the  whole  domain.  The  landscape  is  instantly 
eloquent  and  kindles  all  classes  of  mind  into 
delight. 


320  Daniel  Webster. 

Mr.  Webster's  power  before  jury,  senate,  audi- 
ence, and  court  was  in  this  broad  view  which 
made  facts  sublime.  A  critical  friend  of  mine  at 
the  East  was  fond  of  saying  that  Mr.  Webster 
was  inductive,  Mr.  Calhoun  was  deductive,  Mr. 
Clay  was  seductive.  This  is  as  true  as  it  is  brill- 
iant. Mr.  Webster  never  attempted  to  seduce 
the  judgment  of  his  hearers  by  playing  upon 
their  impressibility;  nor  to  drive  them  into  a 
logical  corral,  by  acute  deductions  of  practical 
results  from  speculative  assumptions,  narrowing 
as  he  came  down.  He  tried  to  induce  conviction 
by  throwing  open  the  facts,  and  asking  his  hearers 
to  rise  with  him  where  they  could  see  the  broad 
masses  of  light  and  shade.  He  was  a  great  rea- 
soner,  not  a  reasoning  machine. 

His  understanding  embraced  the  whole  extent 
of  a  subject,  methodized  its  complicated  details, 
discerned  its  general  laws  and  their  remote  appli- 
cations, and  exhibited  the  whole  to  view  with  a 
clearness  of  arrangement  which  rendered  it  per- 
ceptible to  the  simplest  apprehension.  As  a 
reasoner  he  had  hardly  an  equal  among  his 
countrymen,  either  in  the  sharp,  swift,  close  argu- 
mentation of  vehement  debate,  or  in  the  calm 
survey  and  powerful  combination  of  facts  and 
principles. 

By  this  method  he  held  a  jury  as  he  held 
Chief  Justice  Marshall  or  Judge  Story ;  he  com- 
manded the  Senate  as  he  commanded  Faneuil 
Hall,  or  an  acre  of  Whigs  at  a  mass  meeting. 


Daniel  Webster.  321 

And  his  style  was  admirably  wedded  to  such  a 
method.  How  broad  it  is,  and  yet  how  clear ; 
how  rich,  and  yet  how  simple  ;  how  energetic,  and 
yet  free  from  all  coarseness  and  audacity ;  how 
easy,  and  yet  what  dignity  ;  how  rugged,  and  still 
not  rough ;  how  impassioned  often,  yet  never 
passionate ;  how  opulent  in  imaginative  sugges- 
tions, and  yet  how  severe  in  its  rejection  of 
ornament ! 

You  will  not  find  a  dozen  figures  of  speech, 
you  will  not  find  half  a  dozen  elaborate  similes, 
in  all  the  published  productions  of  his  pen.  In 
this  how  different  from  Burke!  The  "Arabian 
Nights  "  is  not  so  gorgeous  as  Burke.  His  later 
pages  are  like  the  sunset  :  Mr.  Webster's  great 
pages  are  like  the  noon.  He  hated  adjectives. 
He  did  not,  like  Mr.  Choate,  "  drive  a  substantive 
and  six."  He  loathed  all  "  splurge."  Sinew  and 
simplicity,  nouns  and  facts,  he  clung  to,  and  made 
eloquence  result  from  the  breadth  of  the  field  of 
fact  on  which  his  intellect  cast  light. 

I  recall  here  his  criticism  of  a  line  of  Watts 
about  an  angel  moving  "  with  most  amazing 
speed."  This,  he  said,  was  bad.  WThat  meaning 
is  there  in  the  phrase  "  most  amazing  speed  "  ? 
It  conveys  no  sense.  "  It  would  amaze  us,"  he 
said,  "  to  see  an  oyster  moving  a  mile  a  day  ;  it 
would  not  amaze  us  to  see  a  greyhound  run  a 
mile  a  minute."  He  loved  statement,  compre- 
hensive and  decisive,  positive  utterance,  down- 
ward inflections,  —  not  the  fervor  that  stirs,  so 
14* 


322  Daniel   Webster. 

much  as  the  emphasis  that  settles  feeling.  If  he 
could  make  a  thing  seem  great,  he  would  leave 
out  the  adjective  "great." 

Byron  said  that  he  had  heard  Curran  talk  more 
poetry  in  a  speech  than  he  ever  put  into  verse. 
Mr.  Webster's  sensibility  was  always  under  con- 
trol ;  his  imagination  and  his  passions  worked 
through  his  reason,  never  overriding  it ;  no  rhet- 
oric or  fancy  or  sentiment  escaped  him  raw,  in 
mere  gushes  from  an  excited  temperament,  but 
his  most  fervid  or  gorgeous  passages  were  weighty 
with  thought.  Generally  he  kept  close  to  the 
earth,  or  if  he  mounted  it  was  by  climbing,  ridge 
above  ridge,  steep  beyond  steep.  But  when  he 
soared,  it  was  no  movement  of  flimsy  fancy ;  it 
was  the  solid  condor's  body  that  was  borne  aloft 
on  the  mighty  wings  of  feeling,  high  over  the 
Cordillera  spires  of  his  understanding. 

And  his  personal  presence  was  part  of  his 
genius.  What  he  said  seemed  to  be  truer  and 
grander  at  the  moment  for  his  saying  it.  When 
Thorwaldsen,  the  Danish  sculptor,  saw  the  cast 
of  his  head  in  Powers's  studio  in  Rome,  he  said, 
"  Ah,  a  design  for  a  Jupiter.  I  see  !  "  He  would 
not  believe  the  artist,  when  assured  that  it  was  an 
actual  cast  from  a  living  American.  The  coal- 
heavers  in  England,  Mr.  Emerson  says,  followed 
him  with  awe,  as  a  representative  of  one  of  the 
elemental  forces  of  nature.  Sydney  Smith  re- 
marked that  he  was  a  steam-engine  in  trousers, 
and  complained  of  him  as  a  living  lie,  since 


Daniel   Webster.  323 

nobody  on  earth  could  possibly  be  as  great  as  he 
looked. 

When  he  rose  to  address  a  great  audience  on  a 
theme  that  possessed  him,  he  was  the  full  incar- 
nation, to  the  eye,  of  a  philosophic  statesman. 
Then  the  words  of  the  Old  Testament  rose  into 
new  meaning  :  "  This  Daniel  was  preferred  above 
the  presidents  and  princes,  because  an  excellent 
spirit  was  in  him."  Then  the  highest  office 
seemed  to  be  nothing  but  the  proper  pedestal  to 
set  the  proportions  of  his  greatness  in  appropri- 
ate position  and  relief.  Every  one  felt  that  there 
was  an  ample  mind  fitly  embodied, — itself  a 
spiritual  state-house  or  capitol,  rich  with  the  an- 
nals of  constitutional  history,  filled  with  the  lore 
of  national  and  civil  war,  studded  with  apartments 
that  were  crowded  with  records  of  diplomatic  wis- 
dom, freighted  with  the  principles  and  statistics 
of  public  economy.  Every  one  felt  that  his  eye 
was  constructed  to  see  the  truth  and  proprieties 
of  national  relations ;  that  he  knew  the  coasts, 
shoals,  and  soundings  of  national  experience  ; 
that  his  arm  had  vigor  to  grasp  and  guide  the 
helm  of  state. 

And  when  he  spoke,  even  in  his  simplest  pas- 
sages, the'power  of  a  great  personality  was  mani- 
fest. His  common-sense  was  ponderous  and 
even  sublime  by  the  momentum  which  his  arm 
and  inflection  gave  it,  and  the  dignity  which  his 
diction  imparted  to  it.  No  triumph  that  he  ever 
won  seemed  to  require  the  whole  of  his  resources, 


324  Daniel  Webster. 

or  to  drain  the  hiding-places  of  his  strength.  The 
movement  of  his  mind  was  like  the  sluggish  might 
of  the  sea.  Though  his  genius  has  thrown  up 
into  literature  the  most  brilliant  spray  of  rhetoric 
and  imagination,  its  natural  movement  and  sug- 
gestion was  the  ground-swell  of  a  resistless  and 
unfathomable  power.  And  hence  his  eloquence 
had  always  the  serious  and  self-assured  strength 
that  made  it  competent  to  the  utterance  of  a  na- 
tion's thought  and  purpose.  He  would  have  been 
more  fit,  by  language  and  manner,  than  any  other 
man  reared  on  this  continent,  to  represent  the 
American  republic  in  a  world's  congress  of  prime 
ministers  and  kings. 

Some  three  or  four  years  ago  there  was  a  liter- 
ary party  in  London  at  the  house  of  the  venera- 
ble poet,  Samuel  Rogers,  then  ninety  years  old. 
He  had  known  Burke  and  Pitt  and  Fox  and 
Sheridan  personally.  And  late  in  life  he  be- 
came acquainted  with  Mr.  Webster  in  England, 
and  corresponded  with  him.  At  the  party,  on 
the  mention  of  our  dead  statesman's  name,  Mr. 
Rogers  said,  "  I  knew  him  ;  I  received  letters 
from  him.  Edmund,"  he  continued,  turning  to 
a  servant,  "bring  to  me  Mr.  Webster's  letters. 
Daniel  Webster,"  said  he,  when  he  took  the  let- 
ters in  his  hand,  "  was  not  only  the  greatest  man 
of  his  age,  —  he  was  the  greatest  man  of  any 
age." 

The  years  from  1820  to  1828,  as  we  said,  when 
every  step  of  his  complicated  genius  had  been 


Daniel  Webster.  325 

sounded,  were  his  prosperous  and  happy  years. 
His  resource  from  care  was  fishing.  Trout  and 
blue-fish  acknowledged  his  genius  as  well  as 
courts  and  senators.  They  flocked  to  his  hook. 
In  bait  and  debate  he  was  equally  persuasive. 
Feeding  cattle,  or  wading  for  trout,  or  hauling 
blue-fish  through  the  surf,  when  they  pulled  like 
horses,  he  would  say  to  his  companions,  "  This  is 
better  than  wasting  time  in  the  Senate,  gentle- 
men !  "  It  was  while  fishing  for  trout  in  Marsh- 
field  that  he  composed  the  celebrated  passage  on 
the  surviving  veterans  of  the  battle  for  his  first 
Bunker  Hill  address.  He  would  pull  out  a  lusty 
specimen,  shouting,  "  Venerable  men,  you  have 
come  down  to  us  from  a  former  generation. 
Heaven  has  bounteously  lengthened  out  your 
lives  that  you  might  behold  this  joyous  day." 
He  would  unhook  them  into  his  basket,  declaim- 
ing, "  You  are  gathered  to  your  fathers,  and  live 
only  to  your  country  in  her  grateful  remembrance 
and  your  own  bright  example." 

In  his  boat,  fishing  for  cod,  a  day  or  two  before 
the  address  was  delivered,  he  composed  or  re- 
hearsed the  passage  in  it  on  Lafayette,  when  he 
hooked  a  very  large  cod,  and,  as  he  pulled  his 
nose  above  water, exclaimed,  "Welcome!  all  hail! 
and  thrice  welcome,  citizen  of  two  hemispheres!" 

For  many  years  an  Indian  was  the  servant-com- 
panion of  his  fishing  recreation.  Mr.  Webster 
was  very  generous  with  him,  and  the  Indian  was 
a  strongly  attached  and  faithful  dependant.  But 


326  Daniel  Webster. 

once  or  twice  he  became  sadly  intoxicated  (the 
Indian,  of  course),  and  was  forgiven  on  serious 
vows  of  abstinence.  The  third  time  he  was  found 
"half-seas  over"  when  he  ought  to  have  been 
on  land  fit  to  follow  the  streams.  As  soon  as  he 
recovered,  Mr.  Webster,  who  had  found  the 
whiskey-bottle  still  half  full,  lectured  the  penitent 
Indian  on  his  ingratitude.  He  stood  near  a  cart, 
looked  poor  John,  who  crouched  before  him,  in 
the  eye,  and  proceeded  to  enumerate  and  enlarge 
upon  his  offences,  raising  the  whiskey-bottle  over 
the  cart-wheel.  The  Indian  kept  two  ears  open 
to  the  rebuke,  and  two  eyes  open  to  the  danger 
of  the  precious  bottle  being  broken  on  the  wheel. 
He  sobbed  and  cried  ;  but,  just  as  the  bottle  was 
coming  down  with  a  mighty  gesture,  he  jumped 
and  begged,  "  O,  please  don't,  Mr.  Webster !  any- 
thing but  that !"  Again  the  orator  set  out,  poured 
a  deeper  flood  of  indignation  over  John's  fall,  set 
his  sin  in  more  appalling  colors,  raising  his  arm 
and  brandishing  the  bottle  with  the  mounting  fer- 
vor. But  when  the  falling  inflection  was  due,  the 
Indian  sprang  again,  "O,  please  not,  Mr.  Web- 
ster! don't  break  him!"  The  third  time  the 
statesman  started  on  his  flight  for  the  climax 
and  the  swoop.  The  Indian  trembled  with  awe 
and  shame,  but  the  third  time  he  leaped  up  and 
caught  the  descending  arm,  beseeching  that  he 
might  be  flogged,  if  the  bottle  could  be  saved. 
Mr.  Webster  used  to  tell  the  story  as  the  great 
defeat  of  his  life.  He  could  change  the  currents 


Daniel   Webster.  327 

of  constitutional  law  by  an  argument  in  the  Su- 
preme Court  room,  but  he  was  not  master  of 
eloquence  enough  to  make  a  wretched  Indian, 
who  trembled  before  him,  forget  half  a  bottle  of 


rum 


In  1828  and  early  in  1829  Mr.  Webster  met 
great  sorrows.  His  wife  died,  and  his  noble 
brother  Ezekiel  in  his  fiftieth  year,  in  the  prime 
of  great  powers,  of  majestic  beauty,  and  a  solid 
usefulness,  fell  dead  in  a  court-room  while  arguing 
a  jury-cause.  The  blows  were  very  heavy  on  Mr. 
Webster's  heart.  He  felt  the  fatigue  of  wide 
labors.  He  took  less  interest  in  causes.  He 
announced  his  intention  of  retiring  from  political 
life.  Man  proposes  ;  God  disposes.  It  was  then 
that  he  was  turned  to  the  work  which  was  the 
honor  and  crown  of  his  life. 

At  this  time  he  became  convinced  that  the  plan 
of  a  Southern  confederacy  had  been  received  with 
favor  by  a  great  many  of  the  political  men  of  the 
South,  especially  of  South  Carolina.  The  four 
censuses  of  1790, 1800,  1810, 1820,  had  shown  that 
the  North  was  growing  in  population  and  power 
disproportionately  to  the  South  ;  and  it  was  be- 
lieved that  the  protective  policy  to  which  the 
Middle  States  were  ardently  committed  was  re- 
sponsible for  a  large  degree  of  the  increasing  dis- 
parity. Mr.  Calhoun  had  supported  the  policy 
of  incidental  protection  in  1816,  and  had  de- 
nounced disunion  then  as  "  a  word  which  compre- 
hended the  sum  of  our  political  dangers."  His 


328  Daniel  Webster. 

tariff  sentiments  of  that  year  were  framed  and 
hung  up  with  Washington's  Farewell  Address  in 
the  parlors,  hotels,  and  bar-rooms  of  Pennsylvania. 

Mr.  Webster,  who  had  opposed  the  protective 
policy  in  its  origin,  became  a  partial  supporter  of 
it  when  it  had  become  established  ;  and  in  1828 
he  and  Mr.  Calhoun,  who  were  on  opposite  sides 
in  1816,  had  chassed  across  on  the  national  floor, 
and  were  still  facing  each  other  as  antagonists. 
But  with  a  remarkable  difference.  Mr.  Webster's 
position  was  this  :  Union  tariff,  or  no  tariff.  Mr. 
Calhoun's  was :  no  tariff,  or  no  Union.  Mr.  Web- 
ster's feeling  was  that  of  a  patriot ;  Mr.  Calhoun's 
that  of  a  partisan. 

Mr.  Calhoun,  by  urging  and  keeping  the  elec- 
tion of  General  Jackson  in  1828,  hoped  to  break 
the  protective  policy  of  the  country.  If  that  hope 
should  fail,  or  if  General  Jackson  should  prove 
false,  he  intended  to  put  in  force  a  new  theory  of 
the  Constitution,  namely,  that  a  State  had  the 
right  first  to  nullify  a  law  of  Congress,  and  then 
secede. 

Mr.  Webster  foresaw  the  trouble  looming.  The 
cloud  no  bigger  than  a  man's  hand  —  the  hand 
of  Mr.  Calhoun  —  he  saw  might  become  a  tem- 
pest, a  sectional  typhoon,  and  he  determined  to 
be  ready  to  meet  it.  His  labors  in  the  Supreme 
Court  had  led  him  to  a  profound  study  of  the  Con- 
stitution ;  and  now  he  bent  himself  to  a  thorough 
investigation  of  the  relations  of  the  States  to  the 
central  government,  and  of  the  powers  and  duties 


Daniel  Webster.  329 

of  the  Federal  centre  towards  every  possible 
movement  of  treason.  He  made  himself  master 
of  the  whole  subject.  He  told  some  of  his  friends, 
in  after  years,  that  there  was  no  imaginable  form 
of  conflict  between  State  and  Federal  authority 
which  he  did  not  consider,  and  feel  prepared  to 
debate  and  to  meet,  acccording  to  what  he  believed 
to  be  the  true  theory  of  the  Constitution. 

General  Jackson  was  elected,  and  was  inaugu- 
rated March  4,  1829.  Mr.  Calhoun  was  chosen 
Vice-President.  Friends  of  his  were  in  the  Cabi- 
net, and  his  influence  was  weighty,  if  not  control- 
ling, in  the  White  House. 

The  first  Congress  under  that  administration 
assembled  in  December,  1829.  Mr.  Clay  was  not 
in  the  Senate.  No  very  prominent  Whig  or  rep- 
resentative of  New  England  ideas  and  the  pro- 
tective policy  was  there  but  Mr.  Webster.  The 
talent  was  largely  preponderant  on  the  Democratic 
side. 

Very  soon  protection,  New  England,  and  Mr. 
Webster  were  made  the  subject  of  a  combined, 
powerful,  vehement,  and  imbittered  attack.  Mr. 
Calhoun,  who  presided  over  the  Senate,  but  could 
not  speak  in  it,  knew  Mr.  Webster's  power,  and 
knew  that  it  was  necessary  for  his  own  purposes 
that  his  probable  influence  in  the  country  should 
be  crushed. 

About  a  month  after  Congress  assembled,  in 
January,  1830,  Mr.  Webster,  who  had  been  engaged 
in  a  cause  in  the  Supreme  Court  room,  stepped 


33O  Daniel  Webster. 

into  the  Senate  on  his  way  home,  with  a  bag  of 
law-papers  under  his  arm.  Mr.  Hayne,  a  young, 
accomplished  Senator  from  South  Carolina,  a  gal- 
lant, chivalric,  and  fiery  debater,  a  friend  and  confi- 
dant of  Vice-President  Calhoun,  was  delivering 
a  speech  in  which  New  England  was  severely 
handled.  Mr.  Webster,  preoccupied  as  he  was 
with  a  cause  in  the  Supreme  Court,  at  once  re- 
plied, and  in  a  speech  which  is  one  of  the  models 
of  vigorous  debate  in  Saxon  literature. 

Mr.  Hayne  now  took  up  the  warfare  in  hot 
earnest.  Mr.  Benton  built  and  kindled  the  fiery 
furnace,  and  Mr.  Hayne,  in  a  second  speech  of 
two  days,  made  the  flame  seven  times  fiercer,  to 
punish  the  great  Daniel  and  his  friends.  A  speech 
so  intense  and  so  sectional  had  never  then  been 
heard  in  the  Senate  of  the  country.  It  was  uttered 
with  great  declamatory  skill  and  energy;  it  bristled 
with  facts  that  had  an  irritating  look  and  sound, — 
all  the  more  provoking  because  they  seemed  un- 
deniable, —  and  it  put  forth  cautiously  the  new 
doctrine  of  the  right  of  nullification,  —  setting  up 
an  image  of  the  Union,  like  that  of  Nebuchadnez- 
zar's dream,  standing  on  the  right  of  secession, — 
standing  on  brittle  feet  of  clay. 

The  speech  made  an  immense  and  intense  im- 
pression. Hundreds  said  that  Mr.  Webster  was 
annihilated.  A  Senator  from  North  Carolina, 
Mr.  Iredell,  observed  to  one  of  these  jubilant 
friends  of  Mr.  Hayne:  "  He  has  started  the  lion, 
but  wait  till  we  hear  his  roar  or  feel  his  claws." 


Daniel  Webster.  331 

The  roar  and  the  stroke  came  the  next  day.  I 
am  not  going  to  describe  that  reply  of  January 
26,  1830,  Slim,  agile,  impetuous,  fierce,  in  his 
intellectual  assault,  Mr.  Hayne's  attack  was  that 
of  a  leopard  upon  a  good-natured,  sluggish,  sleepy 
lion  in  his  prime.  The  eyes  opened ;  the  mane 
bristled  •  the  muscles  swelled ;  he  uttered  his 
voice ;  he  sprang  ;  he  struck. 

Every  noble  element  of  power  in  debate  is  rep- 
resented in  those  seventy  large  octavo  pages  of 
the  second  reply  to  Mr.  Hayne  in  1830.  But 
there  is  no  mean,  malignant,  taunting,  or  sarcastic 
passage  in  it.  It  is  as  generous  as  it  is  terrible. 
A  distinguished  scholar  who  heard  it  said  that 
nothing  so  completely  realized  his  conception  of 
what  Demosthenes  was  when  he  delivered  his 
"Oration  on  the  Crown."  But  the  great  speech  of 
Demosthenes  is  veined  with  the  fiercest  invective. 
He  played  with  ^Eschines  and  then  poured  vitriol 
on  him.  Mr.  Webster  demolished  his  antagonist's 
speech,  and  yet  spared  him  and  South  Carolina. 
It  was  not  only  crushing,  but  Christian. 

The  marvel  is  that  the  speech,  six  hours  long, 
running  the  whole  gamut  of  senatorial  eloquence, 
fit  to  be  stereotyped  at  once  with  the  noblest 
orations  of  literature,  equally  fascinating  in  the 
market-place  and  the  college,  was  extempore. 
The  language  of  not  a  page  of  it  was  committed 
to  memory.  The  brief  consisted  of  half  a  sheet 
of  letter-paper.  Mr.  Hayne  finished  in  the  after- 
noon of  January  25  ;  Mr.  Webster  replied  the 


332  Daniel  Webster. 

next  morning.  Mr.  Everett  spent  the  evening 
with  him,  and  found  him  entirely  at  ease,  sportive, 
and  full  of  anecdote.  "  He  was  as  unconcerned," 
Mr.  Everett  says,  "  and  as  free  of  spirit,  ...  .  as 
when  floating  in  his  fishing-boat  along  a  hazy 
shore,  gently  rocking  on  the  tranquil  tide,  drop- 
ping his  line  here  and  there  with  the  varying 
fortune  of  the  sport  The  next  morning  he  was 
like  some  mighty  admiral,  dark  and  terrible,  cast- 
ing the  long  shadow  of  his  frowning  tiers  far 
over  the  sea  that  seemed  to  sink  beneath  him,  his 
broad  pendant  streaming  at  the  main,  the  stars 
and  stripes  at  the  fore,  the  mizzen,  and  the  peak  ; 
and  bearing  down  like  a  tempest  upon  his  antag- 
onist, with  all  his  canvas  strained  to  the  wind  and 
all  his  thunders  roaring  from  his  broadsides." 

His  brother  Ezekiel  had  died  a  year  before. 
When,  after  the  Hayne  speech,  his  own  praise  was 
sounded  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  America, 
he  said,  when  some  one  was  extolling  his  merits, 
"  How  I  wish  my  poor  brother  had  lived  till  after 
this  speech,  that  I  might  know  if  he  would  have 
been  gratified ! " 

A  friend  of  mine,  who  was  a  very  intimate  friend 
of  Mr.  Webster,  received  from  him  once  a  state- 
ment of  his  feeling  when  he  rose  to  address  the 
crowded  Senate,  which  is  very  striking  and  which 
has  never  appeared  in  print.  "  Not  until  I  took 
the  floor,  and  saw  the  concourse,  and  felt  the 
hush,"  said  Mr.  Webster,  "  did  I  feel  the  slightest 
trepidation.  Then  it  rushed  upon  me,  the  re- 


Daniel  Webster.  333 

sponsibility  of  my  position.  It  very  nearly  un- 
manned me.  A  strange  sensation  came.  My  feet 
felt  light ;  they  seemed  not  to  touch  the  floor.  It 
was  as  though  I  began  to  rise  and  float.  Instantly 
I  thought  how  my  brother  Ezekiel  died,  a  year 
before,  falling  while  making  a  speech,  and  dead 
before  his  head  touched  the  floor.  By  a  strong 
effort  I  subdued  the  trepidation  and  the  fear. 
Soon  my  feet  felt  the  floor  again.  Then  they 
grew  heavy.  Then  they  seemed  rooted  like  rocks. 
My  brain  was  free.  All  that  I  had  ever  read  or 
thought  or  acted  in  literature,  in  history,  in  law, 
in  politics,  seemed  to  unroll  before  me  in  glowing 
panorama,  and  then  it  was  easy,  if  I  wanted  a 
thunderbolt,  to  reach  out  and  take  it  as  it  went 
smoking  by." 

The  fiery  furnace  built  by  the  Jackson  and 
Calhoun  men  for  Mr.  Webster  did  not  singe 
him.  It  served  other  uses.  In  the  reply  to 
Hayne  Mr.  Webster  drew  out  and  stated  more 
clearly  the  latent  doctrine  of  nullification  and 
secession  which  his  antagonist  had  dallied  with, 
and  exposed  it  to  an  elaborate  and  merciless  ex- 
amination. This  part  of  his  speech  was  entirely 
extempore,  not  a  note  for  it  had  been  prepared  on 
his  brief;  and  it  was  the  first  time  that  the  Consti- 
tution, in  relation  to  State  rights  and  State  wrongs, 
had  been  treated  on  the  floor  of  Congress.  He 
showed  that  a  government  over  twenty-four  States, 
where  any  one  of  them  has  the  right  to  checkmate 
Congress,  the  executive,  and  the  Supreme  Court, 


334  Daniel   Webster. 

was  a  parody  on  government.  A  thing,  he  said, 
with  such  a  principle,  or  rather  such  a  destitution 
of  all  principle  in  it,  should  not  be  called  a  con- 
stitution. "  No,  sir.  It  should  be  called,  rather, 
a  collection  of  topics  for  everlasting  controversy, 
heads  of  debate  for  a  disputatious  people." 

The  chord  he  struck  sounded  rich  and  deep  all 
over  the  land.  It  roused  a  new  tone  of  patriot- 
ism. It  called  out  a  letter  from  the  aged  Madi- 
son, who  indorsed  his  doctrine  as  the  doctrine  of 
the  framers  of  the  Constitution,  and  who  said  "  it 
crushes  nullification,  and  must  hasten  the  aban- 
donment of  secession." 

But  it  did  the  most  efficient  work  in  the  Sen- 
ate. It  compelled  the  Democratic  statesmen  to 
consider  the  question  in  the  egg,  and  take  sides. 
Mr.  Calhoun  presided  over  debates  in  which  his 
theory  found  less  and  less  favor,  and  which  seemed 
to  show  that  the  administration  would  not  be  com- 
mitted to  his  ulterior  plans. 

Yet  he  did  not  despair.  A  few  weeks  later 
the  birthday  of  Mr.  Jefferson  was  celebrated  in 
Washington.  The  nullifiers,  Mr.  Madison  said, 
attempted  "  to  make  the  name  of  Mr.  Jefferson 
the  pedestal  of  their  colossal  heresy."  Mr.  Cal- 
houn and  the  new  President  were  at  the  table. 
The  regular  toasts  were  ambiguous  and  shaky. 
Mr.  Calhoun's  ran  thus  :  u  The  Union  :  next  to 
our  liberty  the  most  dear  ;  may  we  all  remember 
that  it  can  only  be  preserved  by  respecting  the 
rights  of  the  States,  and  distributing  equally  the 


Daniel   Webster.  335 

benefit  and  burden  of  the  Union."  This  is 
conditional,  roundabout,  metaphysical.  Andrew 
Jackson  was  at  the  table.  Mr.  Calhoun,  the  Vice- 
President,  was  his  intimate  confidential  friend. 
But  Old  Hickory  had  done  a  large  deal  of  think- 
ing, with  a  pipe  in  his  mouth,  over  Mr.  Webster's 
reply  to  Hayne.  He  had  a  sentiment  to  offer.  It 
did  not  take  many  words.  "  Our  Federal  Union  : 
it  must  be  preserved."  The  electricity  bristled  on 
the  hero's  hair,  and  gave  a  healthy  shock,  at  the 
right  moment,  to  the  great  Democratic  party  of 
the  land.  Mr.  Webster's  speech  had  become  a 
wedge  between  Calhoun  and  Jackson.  Mr.  Cal- 
houn might  indoctrinate  South  Carolina  as  a  State; 
but  Mr.  Webster's  speech  rose  like  Fort  Sumter, 
which  is  built  on  courses  of  New  Hampshire 
granite,  frowning  over  his  path  with  solemn  muz- 
zles, and  bearing  aloft,  full  high  advanced,  the 
gorgeous  ensign  of  the  republic,  "  its  arms  and 
trophies  streaming  in  their  original  lustre,  not  a 
stripe  erased  or  polluted,  not  a  single  star  ob- 
scured, and  bearing  for  its  motto,  in  characters 
of  living  light,  blazing  on  all  its  ample  folds,  the 
sentiment,  dear  to  every  true  American  heart,  — 
Liberty  and  Union,  now  and  forever,  one  and  in- 
separable ! " 

But  more  trying  times  were  at  hand, — times 
not  only  for  debate,  but  for  action.  The  Tariff 
Bill  of  1832  was  passed,  which  was  felt  —  and  per- 
haps justly —  by  South  Carolina  to  be  oppressive 
and  tyrannical.  And  the  State  which  had,  sixteen 


336  Daniel  Webster. 

years  before,  dropped  the  seeds  of  the  protective 
policy,  prepared  for  nullification  and  secession. 
The  feeling  in  parts  of  the  South  towards  large 
portions  of  the  North,  and  especially  New  Eng- 
land, was  very  bitter,  scarcely  less  so  than  to-day. 
Bat  it  was  redeemed  often  by  a  wit  which  is  not 
common  now.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a  chemical 
analysis  by  Satan  of  a  Yankee  soul,  which  was 
circulated  among  our  Southern  brethren  :  "  Cun- 
ning, \2\  per  cent;  hypocrisy,  \2\  per  cent; 
avarice  and  falsehood,  each  i2\  per  cent;  sneak- 
ingness,  \2\  per  cent ;  nameless  and  numberless 
small  vices,  14  per  cent;  the  remaining  23 \  per 
cent  being  divided  between  New  England  rum, 
essence  of  onions,  codfish,  molasses,  and  beans." 
(This  ought  to  satisfy  some  of  my  German  rela- 
tions, who  were  anxious  a  few  weeks  ago  to  hear 
me  state  of  what  the  blood  of  a  Yankee  professor 
is  compounded.) 

Here,  too,  is  a  picture  of  a  Yankee,  Virgil 
Haskins,  hauled  up  in  the  next  world  before 
Rhadamanthus,  to  answer  for  deeds  done  in  the 
body.  Rhadamanthus  says  :  "I  find  you  charged, 
sir,  with  selling,  in  one  peddling  expedition, 
400,000  wooden  nutmegs,  280,000  Spanish  cigars 
made  of  oak  leaves,  and  647  wooden  clocks. 
What  do  you  say  to  that  charge  ? "  The  Yankee 
ghost  replies,  "  Wai,  that  was  counted  in  our 
place  about  the  greatest  peddling-trip  that  ever 
was  made  over  the  Potomac."  The  judge  con- 
tinues :  "  To  stealing  an  old  grindstone,  smear- 


Daniel   Webster.  337 

ing  it  over  with  butter,  and  then  selling  it  as 
a  cheese."  The  ghost :  "  Jimminy !  surely  ye 
would  n't  punish  a  man  for  that,  would  ye  ? " 
Rhadamanthus  again  :  "  To  making  a  counterfeit 
dollar  of  pewter,  when  you  were  six  years  old, 
and  cheating  your  own  father  with  it."  The 
ghost,  with  glee  :  "  Daddy  was  mighty  glad  when 
he  found  it  eout.  He  said  it  showed  I  had 
a  genius."  The  Yankee  was  condemned  by 
Rhadamanthus  to  be  thrown  into  a  lake  of  hot 
molasses  with  a  grindstone  around  his  neck. 

This  was  one  way  in  which  the  effect  of  Web- 
ster's reply  to  Hayne  was  nullified. 

The  Tariff  Act  of  1832,  which  a  Democratic 
President  had  signed,  was  dealt  with  thus  :  A 
convention  was  called  in  South  Carolina  and  the 
act  was  annulled.  Duties  enjoined  by  it  were 
forbidden  to  be  paid  in  the  State.  No  appeal  to 
the  Supreme  Court  to  attest  the  validity  of  nulli- 
fi ration  was  to  be  allowed.  If  the  government 
attempted  to  enforce  the  tariff  laws,  South  Caro- 
lina would  secede.  Mr.  Hayne  was  now  gov- 
ernor, and  he  resolved  to  carry  out  the  pro- 
gramme. The  State  was  almost  unanimous. 
The  military  were  ready.  Blue  cockades  with  a 
palmetto  button  in  the  centre  were  the  rage. 
Even  medals  were  struck,  with  these  words : 
"  John  C.  Calhoun,  first  President  of  the  South- 
ern Confederacy." 

The  President  replied  in  a  proclamation  which 
indorsed  the  constitutional  doctrines  of  Mr.  Web- 


338  Daniel  Webster. 

ster,  and  was  made  up  in  part  of  his  language. 
He  poured  intense  scorn  on  the  new  doctrine 
that  a  State  had  the  right  to  secede  under  the 
Constitution.  "  Was  our  devotion  paid  to  the 
wretched,  inefficient,  clumsy  contrivance  which 
this  new  doctrine  would  make  the  Constitution  ? 
Did  we  pledge  ourselves  to  the  support  of  an 
airy  nothing,  a  bubble  that  must  be  blown  away 
by  the  first  breath  of  disaffection  ?  "  He  outlined 
the  prosperity  and  happiness  of  the  nation  of 
which  South  Carolina  was  a  part,  and  of  which 
her  blood  had  been  the  cement,  and  he  said  : 
"  Say,  now,  if  you  can,  without  horror  and  re- 
morse, This  happy  Union  we  will  dissolve,  this 
picture  of  peace  and  prosperity  we  will  deface, 
this  free  intercourse  we  will  interrupt,  these 
fertile  fields  we  will  deluge  with  blood,  the 
protection  of  that  glorious  flag  we  renounce, 
the  very  name  of  Americans  we  discard.  And 
for  what,  mistaken  men !  for  what  do  you  throw 
away  these  inestimable  blessings  ?  for  what  would 
you  exchange  your  share  in  the  advantages  and 
honor  of  the  Union  ?  For  the  dream  of  a  sepa- 
rate independence,  a  dream  interrupted  by  bloody 
conflicts  with  your  neighbors  and  a  vile  depend- 
ence on  a  foreign  power." 

Such  is  the  rhetoric  that  befits  the  White 
House  when  the  cockatrice  egg  of  treason  is 
hatched  and  the  young  serpents,  whose  look  is 
venomous  when  they  have  grown,  begin  to  hiss. 

Mr.   Hayne  in  response    to  this  proclamation 


Daniel   Webster.  339 

declared  that  South  Carolina  would  resist  the 
general  government  to  the  extremity. 

General  Jackson  told  one  of  his  friends  once 
that  he  never  had  a  tremor  of  the  hands  in  his 
life.  "My  nerves  are  like  steel  bars."  An  old 
military  friend  called  on  him  in  the  midst  of  the 
secession  storm.  He  was  smoking  a  favorite 
pipe.  "  Sam,"  he  said,  "  they  are  trying  me 
here,  you  will  witness  it;  but  by  the  God  of 
heaven,  I  will  uphold  the  laws."  His  friend 
hoped  that  things  would  yet  go  right.  "They 
shall  go  right,  sir,"  said  Old  Hickory,  on  fire,  — 
and  he  shivered  his  pipe  on  the  table.  He  did  not 
save  his  pipe  and  shiver  his  country,  and  puff  his 
duty  off  in  smoke.  They  say  that  the  General 
never  was  able  to  believe  the  earth  was  round. 
One  thing  he  believed,  —  that  his  country  was  a 
whole,  and  he  did  not  mean  to  see  it  torn  into 
shreds  while  he  had  power  to  strike  the  wretched 
treason. 

Mr.  Calhoun  was  still  in  South  Carolina,  and 
still  Vice-President.  He  resigned  that  office,  was 
elected  Senator  of  South  Carolina,  and  hurried  on 
to  Washington  to  defend  the  attitude  of  his  State 
and  the  right  of  secession  in  the  midst  of  the 
storm.  Jackson  could  deal  with  the  treason  ;  but 
who  could  meet  the  intellectual  leader  of  it,  and 
vanquish  him  before  the  public  sentiment  ?  One 
man  only,  Daniel  Webster,  who  was  at  fatal  issue 
with  Jackson  on  all  the  other  measures  of  his 
administration.  He  had  taken  slight  part  in  the 


340  Daniel  Webster. 

debate  ;  but  now  he  struck  hands  with  the  hero 
of  New  Orleans,  —  the  stateliest  intellect  and  the 
firmest  will  in  the  land  compacted  by  patriotism 
against  arrogant  treason. 

The  Constitution  was  threatened ;  the  country 
was  in  danger ;  the  foundations  of  American 
liberty  were  marked  for  approach  by  sappers  of 
treason.  Mr.  Webster  saw  that  it  was  no  time  for 
party  lines  and  feuds  and  titles.  He  threw  away 
the  name  "Whig" ;  he  forgot  that  Andrew  Jackson 
was  a  Democrat.  He  remembered  only  that  he 
was  an  American,  and  that  General  Jackson  was 
a  patriot,  and  he  pledged  to  him  all  his  strength 
of  brain  and  arm,  just  as  to-day  Mr.  Dickin- 
son and  Mr.  Douglas  and  Mr.  Dix  and  General 
Butler,  strong  opponents  of  President  Lincoln's 
party  platform,  refuse  to  know  anything  about 
platforms  when  the  Constitution  is  struck  at  with 
daggers  and  the  flag  betrayed  ! 

The  debate  of  February,  1833,  on  the  bill 
empowering  the  President  to  collect  the  revenue 
in  South  Carolina,  was  a  very  different  one  from 
the  Hayne  debate  of  three  years  before.  This 
was  discussion  with  hands  upon  swords.  Mr. 
Calhoun  was  the  Hector  of  this  Iliad,  not  unlike 
Homer's  Hector  either, 

«  Prepared 

And  ardent  for  the  task  ;  nor  less  he  raged 
Than  Mars  while  fighting,  or  than  flames  that  seize 
Some  forest  on  the  mountain-tops  ;  the  foam 
Hung  at  his  lips  ;  beneath  his  awful  front 
His  keen  eyes  glistened,  and  his  helmet  marked 
The  agitation  wild  with  which  he  fought." 


Daniel  Webster.  341 

Mr.  Webster  was  the  Achilles  of  the  contest,  — 
Achilles,  whom  Homer  calls  the  "godlike." 

"  His  ponderous  helm 
He  lifted  to  his  brows  ;  star-like  it  shone, 
And  shook  its  curling  crest  of  bushy  gold. 

He  drew  his  father's  spear  forth  from  his  case, 
Heavy  and  huge  and  long.  That  spear,  of  all 
Achaia's  sons,  none  else  had  power  to  wield. 

"  Then  his  corselet  bright 
Braced  to  his  bosom,  his  huge  sword  of  brass 
Athwart  his  shoulder  slung,  and  his  broad  shield 
Uplifted  last,  luminous  as  the  moon." 

Yes,  it  was  his  country's  shield,  rinsed  with  the 
ocean,  as  that  of  Achilles  was.  And  the  fate  of 
the  secession  theory  in  that  mental  combat  was 
the  fate  of  Hector.  It  was  dragged  at  the  con- 
queror's wheel. 

Mr.  Calhoun's  speech  of  two  clays  in  February, 
I^33,  to  prove  the  constitutional  right  of  nullifica- 
tion and  secession,  was  a  splendid  intellectual  effort. 
But  it  was  acute,  artificial,  and  metaphysical.  It 
puzzles  you  while  you  read  it ;  it  melts  away  from 
you  when  you  lay  it  down.  It  is  a  consummate 
piece  of  logic,  but  it  does  not  stand  to  reason. 
And,  like  a  Prince  Rupert's  drop,  break  it  any- 
where,  and  it  flies  to  pieces. 

Mr.  Calhoun  was  fond  of  subtile  speculations. 
He  would  rather  take  a  machine  to  pieces  and 
spoil  it,  to  find  out  the  method  of  its  action,  than 
to  see  it  run. 

When  he  was  a  student  in  Yale  College,  he 


342  Daniel  Webster. 

one  day  delivered  a  disquisition  on  a  very  strange 
and  apparently  absurd  proposition,  which  he  de- 
fended with  great  acuteness.  The  president  of 
the  college  said  to  him,  when  he  had  finished, 
"  Calhoun,  that  is  a  brilliant  piece  of  logic,  and 
if  I  wanted  anybody  to  prove  that  shad  grow  on 
apple-trees,  I  would  appoint  you." 

To  argue  the  right  of  secession  as  granted  in 
the  Constitution  was  to  attempt  to  prove  that  a 
very  scaly  shad  grows  on  an  apple-tree. 

While  he  was  delivering  it  in  the  Senate  before 
an  enormous  crowd,  a  man  in  the  gallery  shrieked 
out,  "Mr.  President,  something  must  be  done, 
or  I  shall  be  squeezed  to  death  !  "  That  is  the 
way  we  feel  in  reading  it.  It  is  an  immensely 
able,  but  speculative  and  artificial  process  of  logic 
for  making  any  one  State  superior,  in  an  emer- 
gency, to  the  United  States,  and  for  squeezing  a 
large-limbed  patriotism  to  death.  Mr.  Calhoun's 
theory  of  nullification  was  a  theory  concocted  to 
meet  a  fact  and  justify  a  passion. 

The  drapery  in  the  old  United  States  Senate- 
room  was  looped  up  and  fastened  by  supports  in 
the  shape  of  stars.  When  Mr.  Calhoun  had  fairly 
commenced  his  nullification  speech,  one  of  these 
stars  fell  to  the  floor  of  the  chamber  with  a  start- 
ling noise.  No  wonder ! 

Mr.  Webster  replied  to  him  at  once  in  a 
speech  of  five  hours,  which  met  every  turn  and 
twist  of  the  secession  hypothesis,  unfolding  the 
Constitution  as  a  power  sovereign  forever,  for 


Daniel  Webster.  343 

certain  purposes,  over  all  the  States  and  all  the 
individuals  in  them,  and  to  be  interpreted  by 
Congress  and  the  Supreme  Court.  Mr.  Calhoun 
contended  for  the  constitutional  right  of  nullifica- 
tion. His  conception  of  the  government  was 
like  an  engine  with  a  sieve  for  a  cylinder.  Mr. 
Webster  demonstrated  that  no  such  right  was 
revealed  or  hidden  or  hinted  in  the  Constitu- 
tion, that  it  was  an  absurdity,  and  that  it  was 
treason. 

His  argument  was  a  noble  piece  of  reason 
contrasted  with  logic.  It  stands  square  on  the 
facts  of  the  Constitution  and  the  early  adminis- 
tration of  it.  It  is  self-consistent  and  self- 
luminous. 

In  closing,  Mr.  Webster  said  that  if  the  friends 
of  nullification  succeed,  "  they  will  prove  them- 
selves the  most  skilful  *  architects  of  ruin,'  the 
greatest  blasters  of  human  hopes,  that  any  age 
has  ever  produced.  They  would  stand  up  to 
proclaim  in  tones  which  would  pierce  the  ears  of 
half  the  human  race,  that  the  last  great  experi- 
ment of  representative  government  had  failed. 
The  doctrine  of  the  divine  right  of  kings  would 
feel,  even  in  its  grave,  a  returning  sensation  of 
vitality.  Millions  of  eyes  of  those  who  now  feed 
their  inherent  love  of  liberty  on  the  success  of 
the  American  example  would  turn  away  from  our 
dismemberment,  and  find  no  place  on  earth  to  rest 
t  their  gratified  sight.  Amidst  the  incantations 
and  orgies  of  nullification,  secession,  disunion 


344  Daniel  Webster. 

and  revolution  would  be  celebrated  the  funeral 
rites  of  constitutional  and  republican  liberty." 

Mr.  Webster  rode  in  General  Jackson's  car- 
riage to  the  Senate-chamber  when  he  made  the 
speech.  This  was  General  Jackson's  summing 
up  of  the  Websterian  principles  :  "  If  this  nulli- 
fication goes  on,  our  country  will  be  like  a  bag 
of  meal  with  both  ends  open.  Pick  it  up  in  the 
middle  or  endwise,  and  it  will  run  out.  I  must 
tie  the  bag  and  save  the  country." 

Mr.  Webster  tied  the  bag  in  theory ;  General 
Jackson  tied  it  in  fact,  and  saved  all  the  meal, 
even  the  South  Carolina  portion.  He  was  ready 
to  arrest  Mr.  Calhoun,  and  have  him  tried  and 
executed  under  martial  law  in  the  District  of 
Columbia  for  treason.  The  great  Senator  was 
visited  one  night,  and  his  danger  revealed  to  him 
in  bed.  But  his  neck  was  saved  by  the  com- 
promise tariff  measure,  which  was  forced  through 
Congress  by  Mr.  Clay  about  the  time  that  the 
Revenue-Force  Bill  was  passed.  Mr.  Calhoun 
was  coerced  into  voting  for  it,  and  South  Caro- 
lina stripped  off  her  military  robes  and  avoided  the 
open  conflict  with  Jackson's  unyielding  will. 

General  Jackson  declared  in  his  last  sickness, 
that  in  reviewing  his  life  his  chief  regret  was  that 
he  had  not  executed  Mr.  Calhoun  for  treason. 
"  My  country,"  said  he,  "  would  have  sustained 
me  in  the  act,  and  his  fate  would  have  been  a 
warning  to  traitors  in  all  time  to  come." 

As  a  display  of  varied  and  sweeping  eloquence, 


Daniel   Webster.  345 

the  speech  cannot  be  compared  with  the  reply  to 
Hayne,  three  years  before.  It  is  of  another  char- 
acter. It  is  an  exhaustive  discussion  of  the  one 
great  question,  "  Is  the  Constitution  a  sovereign 
power  of  government  within  its  limits,  directly 
reaching  the  people  of  the  States,  or  is  it  a  league 
or  treaty  which  any  State  may  construe,  and  from 
which  any  State  may  withdraw  when  it  suits  her 
interests  or  pleases  her  passion  ?  " 

Mr.  Calhoun  maintained  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  the  people  of  the  United  States  as  one 
body.  There  are  separate  communities  only, 
each  owing  supreme  loyalty  to  the  State  consti- 
tution ;  and  whenever  a  State  convention  votes 
the  United  States  Constitution  of  no  authority 
within  its  borders,  no  man  within  that  State 
owes  a  particle  of  allegiance  to  the  central  gov- 
ernment. In  Mr.  Calhoun's  conception  the  gen- 
eral government  is  like  a  large  sheet  of  postage- 
stamps,  all  ready  to  be  detached  in  a  moment, 
and  each  having  no  connection  with  the  others 
that  can  be  injured  vitally  by  being  torn  off. 

Mr.  Webster  regarded  the  State  divisions  as 
the  lines  and  squares  rather  on  a  chess-board, 
over  which  the  great  power  of  the  government 
moved  freely  according  to  prescribed  rules,  and 
so  related  that  no  one  square  and  no  seven 
squares  could  be  separated  from  the  rest  without 
breaking  up  the  whole  board  and  destroying  the 
possibility  of  the  game. 

He  followed  up  every  winding  and  artifice  and 
15* 


346  Daniel   Webster. 

sophism  of  the  secession  hypothesis,  and  exposed 
it.  His  ponderous  intellect  never  played  with 
more  vigor,  never  showed  its  weight  of  metal  and 
the  fatal  force  of  its  blows  more  superbly,  than 
through  the  five  hours  of  this  demolition  of  Mr. 
Calhoun's  heresy. 

His  strokes  fell  like  a  trip-hammer.  The  doc- 
trine of  secession  was  pounded  down  by  it,  beat 
after  beat,  not  into  gold-leaf,  —  for  there  is  not 
any  gold  in  it,  it  is  only  a  slug  of  pewter,  —  but 
into  pewter  thinner  than  tissue  paper.  Mr.  Web- 
ster hammered  it  down  by  the  plain  language  of 
the  Constitution,  by  general  reasoning  on  the 
powers  that  belong  to  all  government,  by  fair 
interpretation  of  its  delegated  authority,  by  the 
history  of  its  formation  and  adoption,  and  by 
showing,  through  logical  satire,  dignified  but 
merciless,  what  an  absurdity,  in  every  possible 
respect,  a  government  would  be,  composed  of  a 
score  or  two  of  states,  any  one  of  which  could 
annul  its  action  at  any  moment  by  a  decision  of 
its  local  courts  and  legislature. 

Mr.  Webster  disapproved  the  tariff  compromise. 
His  position  was,  "  No  ground  can  be  granted, 
not  an  inch,  to  menace  and  bluster.  No  measure 
ever  passed  Congress,"  he  said,  "  during  my  con- 
nection with  that  body,  that  caused  me  so  much 
grief  and  mortification.  The  principle  was  bad, 
the  measure  was  -bad,  the  consequences  were 
bad."  He  believed,  with  Mr.  Benton,  that  "  a 
compromise  made  with  a  state  in  arms  is  a  capit- 


Daniel  Webster.  347 

ulation  to  that  state."  He  wanted  the  strength 
of  the  government  tried,  to  determine  the  point, 
once  for  all,  if  we  have  a  government  worth 
cherishing  and  worth  taxing  ourselves  to  support. 
General  Jackson  would  have  carried  the  country 
through  without  the  compromise ;  Mr.  Calhoun 
saved  his  head  by  it ;  and  yet  just  enough  was 
yielded  in  it  to  give  him  the  excuse  for  saying 
that  the  government  receded  before  his  State  in 
arms. 

The  debate  between  Mr.  Webster  and  Mr.  Cal- 
houn was  free  from  all  personal  heat,  from  all 
bitterness,  from  every  tinge  of  ungentlemanly 
allusion.  In  1847  Mr.  Webster  toasted  the 
memory  of  Hayne  at  a  public  dinner  in  Charles- 
ton. In  1850  he  spoke  weighty,  respectful,  and 
noble  words  over  Mr.  Calhoun  in  the  United 
States  Senate.  And  on  his  death-bed  Mr.  Cal- 
houn spoke  most  respectfully  and  kindly  of  his 
great  antagonist,  saying,  "  Mr.  Webster  has  as  high 
a  standard  of  truth  as  any  statesman  whom  I 
have  met  in  debate." 

They  rest  from  their  labors  and  their  works  do 
follow  them.  Error  is  not  innocent.  Mr.  Calhoun 
was  a  pure,  lofty,  narrow  man.  His  the  ught  has 
done  more  than  any  other  single  force  to  disinte- 
grate the  republic.  It  has  been  the  slow  corrosion 
of  acid  and  frost.  Mr.  Webster's  thought  was  a 
compacting,  confederating,  organizing  energy.  Mr. 
Calhoun  was  the  chieftain  of  a  clan ;  Mr.  Webster 
the  representative  of  a  continent. 


348  Daniel  Webster. 

Mr.  Calhoun  would  have  written  or  branded  on 
the  soul  of  a  man  the  word  "  Kentucky,"  or  "  South 
Carolina,"  or  "  Ohio,"  or  "  Maine."  Mr.  Webster 
would  have  these  written  only  in  small  letters,  for 
a  small  area,  —  but  in  large  capitals,  fit  to  be  read 
in  Europe,  and  everywhere  on  this  round  globe, 
under  every  sky  where  a  seventy-four  with  the 
stars  and  stripes  may  penetrate,  the  word  "  Ameri- 
can." 

After  his  great  debates  of  1830  and  1833  he  wore 
the  title  "  Defender  of  the  Constitution."  He  was 
in  the  general  regard  less  a  politician  than  the 
epic  poet  of  1787.  The  work  of  the  great  conven- 
tion that  framed  our  government  seemed  nobler 
to  the  people  when  reflected  in  his  capacious 
understanding,  and  as  its  ideal  rods  and  beams 
and  valves  worked  without  friction  in  the  bright 
medium  of  his  imagination.  He  did  not  grow 
tired  through  years  of  pleading  for  devotion  to 
the  Constitution  and  Union.  The  rhythm  of  his 
speech  had  peculiar  majesty,  a  tone  of  Hebrew 
grandeur,  on  this  topic,  recurrent  and  ever  fresh. 

It  may  be  a  sign  of  the  secondary  grave  of  his 
genius  that  the  idea  of  right,  in  its  abstract  sub- 
limity, did  not  burn  as  his  beacon.  No  abstract 
principle  or  sentiment  withdrew  him  from  a  care- 
ful measure  of  the  good  which  an  actual  system 
would  secure  to  men  in  the  long  run.  The  cotton 
handkerchief  which  he  bought  in  boyhood  was 
absorbed  into  his  brain  and  blood.  His  eye 
always  seemed  to  take  in  the  moral  and  civil 


Daniel  Webster.  349 

scenery  of  the  country,  —  its  thousands  of  happy 
homes,  its  schools  and  churches,  its  factories 
and  workshops,  the  vast  fleets  of  its  commerce, 
and  the  widening  line  of  civilization  before  which 
the  wilderness  was  falling,  —  and  when  he  spoke 
the  word  "  Constitution  "  or  "  Union,"  in  senate, 
in  caucus,  in  festive  hall,  in  journeys  north  or 
south,  he  made  it  embody  and  exhale  all  the  glad- 
ness and  the  grandeur  which  so  much  prosperity 
and  plenty,  so  much  order  and  happiness,  awak- 
ened in  his  breast.  For  this  reason  he  called  on 
his  countrymen  to  cherish  the  sentiments  that 
should  make  that  word  sacred.  For  this  reason 
he  continually  used  the  awful  imagery  of  the 
breaking  up  of  constellations,  and  of  anarchy  in 
the  firmament,  to  state  the  terrors  and  woes  that 
would  attend  an  explosion  of  the  forces  which 
bind  the  States  together.  His  intellect  seemed  to 
feel  that  their  combination  was  not  of  man,  but 
was  an  organic  miracle,  and  to  be  constantly  con- 
scious of  the  delicacy  of  their  poise. 

In  1850,  when  California  knocked  for  admission 
into  the  Union,  and  he  was  ready,  as  he  was  not 
in  1833,  to  meet  clamor  with  compromise,  —  and 
there  were  so  many  who  loved  him  that  could  not 
go  with  him,  —  he  did  not  act  from  base  motives. 
He  was  not  indifferent  to  the  evils  which  are 
covered  and  partially  maintained  by  our  national 
bond,  but  he  would  not  look  at  the  evils  exclu- 
sively or  minutely.  He  saw  an  immense  over- 
balance of  good, — benefits  more  various,  more 


3 SO  Daniel  Webster. 

substantial,  and  more  precious  than  any  polity  on 
earth  had  ever  secured  to  men. 

And  the  great  future  of  America  (if  explosive 
passions  could  then  be  kept  down)  charmed  his 
imagination.  He  comprehended  what  the  country 
would  be  centuries  hence.  In  swelling  speech  he 
loved  to  bid  future  generations  hail.  And  he 
seemed  to  see,  I  doubt  not,  the  upturned  faces  of 
the  Saxon  millions  yet  to  come,  beseeching  him, 
by  their  looks  and  by  their  prayers,  to  pledge  all 
the  resources  of  his  intellect  and  his  influence  to 
preserve  the  unity  and  peace  of  a  nation  upon 
which  their  fortunes  and  happiness  were  at  issue. 
He  thought  that  a  little  concession  then  would 
be  final.  He  thought  the  North  was  bound  by 
oath  and  obligation  to  return  the  fugitives.  He 
granted  the  concession.  He  put  his  lips  to  the 
trumpet  and  called  on  the  North  to  obey  the  Con- 
stitution. 

But  no  word  from  his  fervid  speeches  and 
countless  letters  of  those  last  years  is  in  the  re- 
motest degree  kindred  with  the  logic  and  the 
passions  of  secessionists  to-day  or  of  their  abettors, 
or  of  the  lukewarm  supporters  of  the  Constitution, 
which  are  the  most  despicable  tribe.  (A  man 
may  well  be  perplexed  to  know  what  course  of 
action  is  wisest  in  the  head  of  the  nation,  but  if 
he  is  lukewarm  in  feeling  towards  treachery  and 
towards  his  country's  Constitution  and  flag  and 
Congress  and  President,  the  nation  says,  in  the 
voice  of  the  Apocalypse,  "  So  then,  because  thou 


Daniel  Webster.  351 

art  lukewarm,  and  neither  cold  nor  hot,  I  will  spew 
thee  out  of  my  mouth/') 

Mr.  Webster  did  not  propose  to  alter  the  Consti- 
tution to  appease  rebellion.  He  proposed  to  make 
it  obeyed  in  the  North  ;  and  every  man  ought  to 
say  now,  that  the  Constitution  must  be  obeyed  in 
the  South,  — arms  grounded,  forts  yielded, stolen 
money  returned,  the  flag  run  up  and  saluted,  and 
Abraham  Lincoln  acknowledged  as  rightful  Presi- 
dent of  thirty-four  States,  before  the  convention 
shall  be  called  that  is  to  consider  an  alteration 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  land. 

A  year  after  Mr.  Webster's  ;th  of  March  speech, 
in  his  oration,  4th  of  July,  in  Washington,  in  laying 
the  foundation  of  the  new  wing  of  the  Capitol,  he 
denounced  the  spirit  of  secession  then  smoulder- 
ing in  South  Carolina  and  Mississippi  in  language 
at  once  ponderous  and  impassioned.  He  said  that 
the  trouble  there  was  excessive  prosperity  under 
the  Constitution,  and  for  that  the  advice  of  the 
secession  doctors,  he  doubted  not,  would  be  a 
sovereign  remedy. 

Call  up  his  swarthy  ghost  to  help  secession  ?  It 
is  Saul  calling  up  Samuel,  to  hear  denunciation 
and  the  prophecy  of  doom  ! 

The  spirits  that  come  at  the  call  of  patriotism 
perplexed  —  Washington  and  Hamilton,  Jeffer- 
son and  Adams,  Marshall  and  Story,  Jackson  and 
Webster,  Benton  and  Clay,  representing  the  suf- 
fering and  victory  of  the  Revolution,  the  early  joy 
on  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  the  peaceful 


352  Daniel  Webster. 

civil  struggles  under  it,  and  every  form  of  the 
prosperity  it  has  poured  upon  East  and  South  and 
North  —  preach,  in  common  tone,  to  all  sections, 
obedience  to  the  central  law  till  all  the  people 
shall  legally  dissolve  the  bond  ;  they  frown  upon 
disruption  ;  they  counsel  common  devotion  to  the 
common  and  just  ends  of  government;  they  plead 
for  the  return  of  fraternal  sentiments  ;  and  they 
appeal  to  the  rising  life  of  the  land  in  the  words 
of  Webster  shortly  before  he  passed  into  immor- 
tality :  "  The  young  men  of  this  generation,  and 
of  the  succeeding  generations :  may  they  live  for- 
ever, but  may  the  Constitution  and  the  Union 
outlive  them  all !  "  * 

MARCH  19,   1861. 

*  After  the  rebellion  broke  out,  Mr.  King  added  the  following 
passage  to  this  lecture  :  "  Mr.  Webster  and  Mr.  Calhoun,  we  say, 
are  dead.  No  ;  they  '  still  live.'  On  the  floor  of  the  Senate  they 
were  for  twenty  years  the  able,  fit,  and  courteous  representatives 
of  hostile  principles.  They  might  be  respectful  and  kindly  towards 
each  other,  and  shake  hands  as  friends,  but  their  principles  were  as 
irreconcilable  as  two  railroad  trains  approaching  on  the  same  track 
under  full  steam.  Mr.  Clay,  in  1833,  switched  them  off  just  in  time 
to  save  a  collision.  But  now  the  crash  is  about  to  come.  There 
is  no  switch-man  now ;  and  nobody  wants  any.  Those  two  men 
are  ruling  America  at  this  hour  by  the  hostile  array  of  their  ideas 
for  a  final  collision. 

"  Mr.  Calhoun's  thought  has  taken  form  in  the  conventions  that 
have  voted  down  the  Constitution,  and  yet  have  not  submitted  their 
treason  to  the  votes  of  the  people  ;  in  the  three  or  four  millions  of 
white  men  that  refuse  the  name  '  American '  and  say  that  the 
fathers  of  the  republic  were  mistaken  in  their  doctrines  of  free- 
dom ;  in  the  booming  cannon  that  fired  at  the  national  flag  over 
Sumter ;  in  the  arming  of  privateers  against  American  commerce ; 
in  the  appeal  of  the  confederate  traitors  for  fifty  millions  to  lie 
spent  in  striking  at  the  national  flag  still  more  passionately ;  in  the 


Daniel   Webster.  353 

doctrine  dramatized  in  disaster  and  war,  that  the  minority  ought 
to  be  allowed  to  rule. 

"  Mr.  Webster's  thought  breaks  out  afresh  in  the  proclamation  of 
the  President  that  America  is  one  and  cannot  be  broken  ;  it  bursts 
forth  in  the  banners  thick  as  the  gorgeous  leaves  of  the  October 
forests  that  have  blossomed  all  over  eighteen  or  twenty  States ;  it 
shows  itself  in  the  passion  of  the  noble  Union  men  of  the  South 
who  will  not  bow  to  Baal ;  it  floats  on  every  frigate  that  rides  the 
sea  to  protect  our  shipping ;  it  leaps  forth  and  brightens  in  the  sa- 
cred steel  which  patriots  by  the  hundred  thousand  are  dedicating, 
not  to  ravage,  not  to  murder,  not  to  hatred  of  any  portion  of  the 
southern  section  of  the  confederacy,  but  to  the  support  of  the  im- 
partial Constitution,  to  the  common  flag,  to  the  majestic  and  be- 
neficent law  which  offers  to  encircle  and  bless  the  whole  republic  ; 
it  utters  itself  in  the  thunder-voice  of  twenty  millions  of  white  citi- 
zens of  the  land,  that  in  America  the  majority  under  the  Constitu- 
tion must  rule,  and  the  public  law  must  be  obeyed. 

"  And  when  the  work  of  the  government  shall  be  accomplished, — 
when  the  stolen  money  of  the  nation  shall  be  refunded ;  when  hos- 
tile artillery  shall  be  withdrawn  from  the  lower  banks  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi ;  when  the  flag  of  thirteen  stripes  and  thirty-four  stars  shall 
float  again  over  Sumter,  over  New  Orleans,  over  every  arsenal  that 
has  seen  it  insulted,  over  Mount  Vernon  and  the  American  dust  of 
Washington,  over  every  State  capitol,  and  along  the  whole  coast 
and  border  line  of  Texas;  when  every  man  within  the  present 
limits  of  the  immense  republic  shall  have  restored  to  him  the  right 
of  pride  in  the  American  navy,  and  of  representation  on  common 
terms  in  the  national  Capitol,  and  of  citizenship  on  the  whole  con- 
tinent ;  when  leading  traitors  shall  havebeen  punished,  and  the  Con- 
stitution vindicated  in  its  unsectional  beneficence,  and  the  doctrine 
of  secession  be  stabbed  with  two  hundred  thousand  bayonet  wounds, 
and  trampled  to  rise  no  more,  — then  the  debate  between  Mr. 
Calhoun  and  Mr.  Webster  will  be  completed,  the  swarthy  spirit  of 
the  great  defender  of  the  Constitution  will  triumph,  and  a  restored, 
peaceful,  majestic,  irresistible  America  will  dignify  and  consecrate 
his  name  forever." 


X. 


BOOKS  AND  BEADING.* 

I  CANNOT  imagine  how  a  speaker  can  more 
profitably  use  the  hour  in  which  you  honor 
him  with  a  listening  ear  than  by  an  address  on 
Books  and  Reading. 

The  supreme  privilege  and  advantage  which 
modern  society  enjoys  over  society  five  hundred 
years  ago  is  printed  literature.  There  are  scores 
of  blessings  connected  organically  with  civiliza- 
tion that  raise  the  plane  of  our  life ;  but  over  all 
secular  boons  this  one  is  sovereign,  —  the  print- 
ing-press, which  arrests  and  cheapens,  which  ac- 
cumulates and  scatters,  the  victories  of  genius  and 
the  stores  of  intellectual  toil. 

Our  education  is  conducted  by  the  first  masters 
in  each  department  through  the  help  of  books 
and  their  cheapness.  We  go  to  a  college,  pos- 
sibly, where  only  third-rate  professors  preside  and 
teach,  or  we  may  be  too  poor  to  attend  any 
college  or  academy  ;  but  for  a  dollar  or  two  we 

*  This  lecture,  written  in  San  Francisco,  had  an  extraordinary 
popularity  in  every  city  and  town  in  California  where  it  was  de- 
livered. 


Books  and  Reading.  355 

may  be  in  Faraday's  class  in  chemistry,  force 
Buttmann  to  teach  us  Greek,  listen  to  Owen  on 
anatomy,  make  Schlegel  interpret  the  master- 
pieces of  literature,  and  detain  Macaulay  or 
Guizot  at  will,  to  unfold  their  knowledge  of  the 
laws  and  the  heroes  of  the  last  eighteen  hundred 
years. 

Books  are  our  university.  Spirits  are  our 
schoolmasters.  The  quintessence  of  truth,  for 
which  a  man  has  spent  years  and  genius  and 
thousands  sterling,  too,  is  compacted  into  a  pack- 
age that  does  not  waste  by  multiplying,  and,  for 
a  few  shillings,  is  a  force  of  education  to  crowds 
by  the  Mississippi,  near  the  Yuba,  and  "in  the 
continuous  woods  where  rolls  the  Oregon." 

All  other  helps  to  culture  are  feeble  in  impor- 
tance contrasted  with  books.  To  hundreds  of 
thousands  the  whole  sky  is  less  than  an  ordinary 
treatise  on  astronomy,  and,  if  they  should  live 
under  it  through  twenty  generations,  could  never 
suggest  a  thousandth  part  so  much.  A  tolerably 
cultivated  man  might  thread  all  the  passes  of  the 
Alps,  and  travel  along  the  table-land  of  the 
Andes  with  eyes  wide  open,  and  know  less  of 
mountains,  and  be  stirred  with  a  feebler  sense 
of  sublimity,  than  by  reading  the  fourth  volume  of 
Ruskin's  "  Modern  Painters."  The  Wandering  Jew 
might  gossip  to  you  the  details  of  Europe  during 
the  last  ten  centuries,  and  leave  with  you  immeas- 
urably less  of  history  than  a  compend  by  Vico, 
Montesquieu,  or  Hegel  would  impart.  The  first 


356  Books  and  Reading. 

would  show  you  a  pageant ;  the  second  would 
disclose  the  laws  on  which  centuries  are  strung. 
And  the  careful  study,  during  the  evenings  of  a 
week,  of  the  "Essay  on  Classification,"  about 
two  hundred  pages  long,  which  introduces  Agas- 
siz's  great  work  on  the  Natural  History  of  our 
Country,  would  disclose  vastly  more  of  the  crea- 
tion to  a  man  of  average  brain,  than  if  he  could 
see  all  the  living  creatures  of  the  globe  march  by 
him,  two  and  two,  as  the  animals  went  into  the  ark, 
and  could  then  be  conducted  through  a  museum 
crowded  with  fossil  exhibitions  of  every  species 
entombed  in  the  planet's  crust.  The  sight  of  all 
the  facts  would  be  like  looking  upon  a  shapeless 
heap  of  types.  The  study  of  the  essay  by  the 
great  naturalist  would  show  you  something  of  the 
thought  of  the  Creator  expressed  in  the  animal 
world,  from  the  birth  of  the  first  creature  with 
sensation,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years  ago, 
to  the  turtle  that  lies  now  on  his  back  in  Clay 
Street,  awaiting  promotion  to  soup  and  humanity. 

To  the  mass  of  the  world,  who  have  not  the 
leisure  or  the  ability  to  wrest  truth  at  first  hand 
from  its  hiding-places,  contact  with  books  is  of 
more  account  than  immediate  contact  with  all 
of  the  Divine  wisdom  that  is  directly  poured  into 
the  universe. 

There  is  no  danger,  therefore,  that,  with  all 
our  stilted  apostrophes  to  the  printing-press,  we 
shall  overrate  the  privilege  of  libraries  and  litera- 
ture. There  is  far  more  danger  that,  because 


Books  and  Reading.  357 

of  this  din  of  turgidness,  we  shall  lose  the  sense 
of  our  boon,  or  fail  to  take  its  measure. 

Plato,  in  one  of  the  most  charming  of  his 
Dialogues,  disparages  books  as  a  means  of 
instruction,  in  comparison  with  conversation. 
"  Written  truth,"  he  says,  "  resembles  painting. 
Its  productions  stand  out  as  if  they  were  alive  ; 
but  if  you  ask  them  any  question  they  observe  a 
solemn  silence.  And  so  it  is  with  written  dis- 
courses ;  you  would  think  that  they  spoke  as 
though  they  possessed  some  wisdom  ;  but  if  you 
ask  them  about  anything  they  say,  from  a  desire 
to  understand  it,  they  give  only  one  and  the  self- 
same answer.  And  when  it  is  once  written,  every 
discourse  is  tossed  about  everywhere,  equally 
among  those  who  understand  it,  and  among  those 
whom  it  in  no  wise  concerns,  and  it  knows  not 
to  whom  it  ought  to  speak  and  to  whom  not. 
And  when  it  is  ill-treated  and  unjustly  reviled  it 
always  needs  its  father  to  help  it ;  for,  of  itself, 
it  can  neither  defend  nor  help  itself." 

Now  it  is  by  the  grace  of  the  printing-press 
that  we  are  able  to  know  this  criticism  of  the 
great  Plato,  and  to  make  Plato  repeat  his  best 
sayings  at  our  pleasure.  By  books  we,  in  fact, 
go  into  the  society  of  the  best  men  of  all  ages, 
and  hear  them  say  their  best  things.  I  know 
that  a  man  is  greater  than  his  noblest  book,  and 
that  to  know  him  thoroughly  and  have  intimate 
communion  for  years  with  his  genius  in  its  private 
and  flexible  play,  is  better  than  to  know  all  his 


Books  and  Reading. 

editions  by  heart.  But  no  talk  with  Milton  could 
give  "  Paradise  Lost "  or  "Comus"  or  even  "II  Pen- 
seroso."  If  one  could  have  made  a  call  on  New- 
ton in  his  library,  or  at  his  office  in  the  mint,  he 
might  have  been  in  a  peevish  mood,  you  might 
hear  him  fret  over  his  quarrel  with  Flamsteed,  or 
he  would  possibly  talk  a  little  about  the  philoso- 
pher's stone.  You  would  not  get  a  chapter  of 
queries  as  to  optics  out  of  him,  or  a  demonstra- 
tion of  the  speed  of  the  moon's  fall  towards  the 
earth  every  second.  You  certainly  would  not 
get  the  whole  "Principia."  Suppose  you  could 
have  dropped  in  to  see  Shakespeare  in  his  com- 
fortable country  home.  He  would  have  treated 
you  to  as  much  sack,  no  doubt,  as  you  could 
"  stagger  under,"  you  might  have  gone  away  "hap- 
py "  as  Cassio,  but  do  you  think  that  in  your  inter- 
view you  could  have  been  carried  up  into  the 
region  of  his  genius  where  Imogen  and  Hamlet 
started  into  life,  or  down  into  the  depths  of  his 
feeling  whence  the  richest  sonnets  issued  ?  Call 
on  Thackeray,  in  London,  and  there  is  danger 
that  he  will  engage  the  time  with  his  grievances 
against  his  fellow-member  of  a  literary  club,  who 
photographed  his  broken  nose  too  vividly  in  a 
letter :  he  would  not  sketch  Mrs.  Henry  Esmond 
for  you.  Nor  would  Dickens,  seek  him  with  the 
warmest  letter  of  introduction,  unveil  to  you  that 
tropic  region  of  his  sea-like  heart  from  which  the 
Agnes  of  "  David  Copperfield  "  rose  as  Aphrodite 
from  the  foam  near  Cyprus.  He  might  be  too 


vy 

Books  and  Reading/  I  'y, ,      359 


-, 

busy  with  details  of  domestic  friufyy, .  ,1  haver') 
seen  letters  lately  from  friends  in  Florence  vrfrijclji 
describe  most  temptingly  the  vigor  and  passiort 
of  old  Walter  Savage  Lander's  dinner-table  con- 
versation. But  you  can  take  a  volume  of  his 
"  Imaginary  Conversations  "  and  overhear  what  he 
would  say  at  a  dozen  dinner-parties,  if  he  could 
have  the  winnowed  genius  of  two  thousand  years 
for  guests.  Perhaps  the  report  which  a  genial 
and  appreciative  gentleman  once  gave  me  of  a 
long  interview  with  Thomas  De  Quincey,  who 
lately  died  in  Scotland,  came  as  near  affecting  me 
with  envy  as  any  literary  tidings  of  that  kind  I 
ever  heard.  Yet  for  six  "  bits  "  I  can  buy  De  Quin- 
cey's  "  Suspiria  de  Profundis,"  the  sequel  to  his 
"  Opium-Eater,"  and,  whenever  I  please,  can  sink 
into  the  music  of  that  prose  which,  I  believe,  is 
the  most  rich  and  masterly  since  Hooker's. 

No  doubt  there  are  a  great  many  persons  who 
think  thus  with  themselves  when  they  desire  a 
firmer  or  clearer  Christian  faith  :  What  a  privi- 
lege it  was  to  live  in  the  time  of  Jesus !  to  see 
him  pass  through  the  village  of  Capernaum  or 
Sychar,  or  resting  in  Bethany !  to  hear  the  sen- 
tences of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  fall  from  his 
lips !  to  see  him  take  little  children  in  his  arms 
and  bless  them  !  to  be  present  when  he  unsealed 
the  sight  of  Bartimeus,  and  know  thus  that  he 
was  from  heaven  !  or,  greater  privilege  still,  to 
have  been  with  him  a  witness  of  the  transfigura- 
tion !  The  first  disciples,  some  are  apt  to  say, 


360  Books  and  Reading. 

had  unspeakably  richer  opportunities  than  we  can 
have  to  know  the  truths  and  to  live  out  the  spirit 
of  the  Christian  religion. 

Yet,  have  we  ever  thought  of  the  fact  that,  by 
means  of  a  book  that  would  not  make  more  than 
two  hundred  duodecimo  pages,  we  know  more 
about  Jesus  than  any  inhabitant  of  Nazareth,  any 
citizen  of  Cana,  any  dweller  in  Sychar,  could  have 
known  ?  They  knew  only  a  fragment  or  two  of 
his  experience.  They  heard  only  a  parable,  or 
saw  only  one  wonderful  act  performed  as  he  went 
through  their  streets  on  his  way  to  Jerusalem. 
Which  has  had  the  ampler  earthly  opportunity 
to  get  into  communion  with  the  mind  and  spirit 
of  the  Saviour,  the  woman  of  Samaria,  who  lis- 
tened to  his  talk  with  her  by  the  well,  and  misun- 
derstood the  most  of  it,  or  you,  who  are  present, 
whenever  you  please,  though  the  printed  biogra- 
phies, at  that  interview,  and  are  within  "  earshot  " 
also  of  his  dialogue  with  Nicodemus,  his  parable 
of  the  Good  Samaritan,  his  conversation  with  the 
young  Pharisee,  his  various  calls  to  consecration, 
his  interpretation  of  God's  character  in  the  pic- 
ture of  the  prodigal's  father,  —  you  who  have  the 
whole  outline  of  Christ's  career,  and  scores  of 
avenues,  by  his  acts  and  his  instructions  and  his 
prayers,  to  reach  the  inmost  riches  of  his  soul  ? 

Books  are  our  crowning  privilege  in  modern 
civilization.  With  a  taste  for  books  and  music, 
let  every  person  thank  God,  night  and  morning, 
that  he  was  not  born  earlier  in  history.  "  Books 


Books  and  Reading.  361 

and  music,"  did  I  say  ?  Books  are  music.  What 
was  it  to  know  Beethoven  personally  in  compari- 
son with  knowing  and  hearing  the  andante  of  the 
Fifth  Symphony,  the  scherzo  of  the  Seventh,  the 
adagio  of  the  Ninth  ?  Books  contain  the  hid- 
den harmonies,  the  ecstatic  melodies  of  the  spirits 
that  are  touched  to  fine  issues.  If  an  organ  was 
conscious  and  could  play  itself,  what  would  its 
broken  phrases,  its  irregular  fantasies,  its  musical 
chatter,  however  rich  in  separate  tones,  or  occa- 
sional chords,  be  to  the  overhearing  it  some 
vesper-time,  or  at  midnight,  pour  out  the  full 
capacity  of  its  tenderness  and  passion  through  a 
fugue  or  mass  or  Hallelujah  Chorus?  It  is  the 
chatter  of  genius  that  we  get  in  the  ordinary  play 
of  the  personality  of  Shakespeare  and  Wordsworth, 
Scott  and  Carlyle.  Sit  down  alone  with  "Mac- 
beth" or  "The  Excursion,"  with  "The  Cenci " 
or  "  Wallenstein,"  with  "  Pilgrim's  Progress  "  or 
"  Guy  Mannering  "  or  "  Sartor  Resartus,"  and  you 
begin  to  hear  the  organ  swells  and  symphonies. 

If  books  cost  in  proportion  to  their  grade  or 
value,  or  if  the  higher  levels  of  composition  and 
creation  were,  of  necessity,  so  written  that  they 
could  be  understood  only  by  severe  application, 
like  that  of  learning  a  foreign  language,  or  the 
higher  mathematics,  how  would  society  be  af- 
fected with  a  fresh  and  worthy  sense  of  the  privi- 
lege of  books  and  reading !  If  only  the  aristoc- 
racy of  wealth  could  buy  Dante  and  the  Waverley 
Novels,  and  the  literature  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth, 
16 


362  Books  and  Reading. 

or  could  read  of  Copernicus,  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion, and  Herschel's  astronomy,  or  could  own  the 
Prophets  and  the  four  Gospels  ! 

No,  — we  do  not  say  the  empire  of  letters,  the 
kingdom  of  letters,  the  aristocracy  or  oligarchy 
of  letters,  but  the  republic  of  letters.  Knowledge 
of  the  alphabet  is  your  card  of  invitation  and 
your  unquestioned  ticket  of  entrance  to  its  ses- 
sions and  feasts.  A  friend  of  mine  said  once  at 
a  public  dinner  in  New  York  that  it  was  no 
wonder  the  age  was  bearing  on  all  nations  and 
institutions  to  greater  freedom  ;  "  for,"  said  Ire, 
"  the  steam-engine  is  a  snorting  democrat."  It 
does  have  a  short-jacket,  grimy,  shoulder-striking 
look.  Every  steam-engine  seems  to  me  as  though 
it  would  like  to  say,  "  Take  a  good  stare  at  me,  — 
I  am  one  of  the  boys."  Only  it  is  not  a  disunion 
democrat.  It  wants  free  range  up  and  down  the 
country,  east  and  west  and  criss-cross ;  and  pants 
for  the  time  when  it  can  scare  a  herd  of  buffaloes 
on  the  central  plains,  and  make  Brigham  Young 
stop  his  ears,  as  it  screeches  through  Utah,  on 
an  excursion  westward  with  the  great  United 
States  mail  behind,  and  the  old  flag  flashing 
through  its  smoke  with  no  star  less  than  it  bears 
to-day. 

So  is  the  steam-press  a  democrat.  Men  may 
hoard  money  and  hide  it ;  but  the  cylinder-press 
screams  to  the  people:  "If  there  is  any  truth 
uttered  in  any  part  of  the  world,  and  you  want  it, 
let  me  know  and  you  shall  have  it  cheap."  A 


Books  and  Reading.  363 

great  man  may  reserve  his  personal  conversation 
for  a  favored  few,  but  the  large  talk  of  his  soul  is 
poured  out  through  literature  to  whatever  crowds 
will  gather  around  his  page,  and  even  his  private 
correspondence,  after  one  generation,  is  rum- 
maged for  the  entertainment  of  everybody.  A 
man  of  genius,  if  he  have  affluence,  may  be  mean 
and  niggardly  with  it.  He  may  build  a  palace <for 
selfish  enjoyment,  and  may  wall  himself  out  from 
sympathy  with  his  kind,  while  he  devotes  his 
means  and  time  to  the  acquisition  of  knowledge 
as  a  private  luxury.  But  the  palace  of  truth 
which  he  rears  thus  over  his  spirit,  —  its  founda- 
tions of  visible  fact,  its  pillars  of  law,  its  dome 
solemn  with  the  glimmer  of  mysteries,  —  from 
this  he  cannot  exclude  the  race  ;  our  little  ticket 
of  the  alphabet  admits  you  and  me  j  he  cannot 
fence  off  his  ground  or  patent  his  key;  it  is  open 
forever  to  all  pilgrims,  and  "  no  man  can  shut 
the  door "  ;  it  is  free  to  you  if  you  have  fellow- 
ship with  his  thought,  and  can  be  kindled  by 
it,  as  St.  Peter's  is  to  the  poorest  believer  in 
Rome.* 


"  But  we,  brought  forth  and  reared  in  hours 
Of  change,  alarm,  surprise,  — 
What  shelter  to  grow  ripe  is  ours  ? 
What  leisure  to  grow  wise  ? 
Too  fast  we  live,  too  much  are  tried, 
Too  harassed,  to  attain 
Wordsworth's  sweet  calm,  or  Goethe's  wide 
And  luminous  view  to  gain." 

ARNOLD'S  Olermann. 


364  Books  and  Reading. 

When  we  begin  to  talk  more  practically  about 
the  privilege  of  books  and  reading,  of  course  we 
must  lay  heavy  stress  on  the  word  "selection." 

The  largest  collection  of  books  in  the  world, 
the  Imperial  Library  of  Paris,  contains  more  than 
800,000  volumes  and  about  100,000  manuscripts. 
Now  we  often  talk  about  an  omnivorous  reader 
and  a  very  widely  read  man.  But  "  art  is  long 
and  time  is  fleeting."  At  the  rate  of  a  volume 
a  day,  stopping  on  Sundays  to  rest  the  eyes 
(and  go  to  church),  it  would  require  almost  3,000 
years  to  finish  the  job.  A  man  who  should  have 
begun  it  in  the  reign  of  King  David  would  be 
just  about  checking  the  last  book  on  the  catalogue 
to-night. 

If  single  copies  of  every  book  that  has  been 
published  since  the  invention  of  printing  could  be 
placed  lengthwise  in  this  State,  the  line  would 
stretch  from  the  vineyards  of  Los  Angeles  to  the 
snowy  beard  of  Mount  Shasta.  And  all  the  paper 
that  has  been  printed  to  be  bound  into  books 
would  doubtless  cover  every  State  and  Territory, 
lake,  river-bed,  and  mountain-range  of  the  United 
States.  Yet  no  man  lives,  —  no  threadbare  book- 
worm, no  German  professor  whose  blood  is  a  de- 
coction of  tobacco-smoke  and  beer,  —  that  has 
read  through  probably  half  as  many  volumes  as 
the  Mercantile  Library  in  this  city  contains.  So 
important  to  the  greediest  reader  does  Nature  — 
which  does  not  build  our  lives  on  the  scale  of 
Methusaleh  —  make  selection. 


Books  and  Reading.  365 

A  hundred  volumes,  I  believe,  could  be  se- 
lected, the  mastery  of  which,  by  attentive  read- 
ing, would  make  a  man  better  furnished  with 
instruction,  and  better  able  to  comprehend  and 
enjoy  the  advances  of  knowledge,  under  the  lead 
of  the  explorers  of  this  generation,  than  any 
scholar  or  literary  man  we  have  in  our  country 
to-day.  So  important  is  wisdom  in  selection  for 
its  practical  benefits ! 

Of  course,  I  am  talking  now  of  reading  for  the 
sake  of  enjoyable  knowledge,  not  for  the  sake  of 
a  profession,  or  for  practical  application  to  any 
branch  of  labor,  or  for  the  purpose  of  exhaustive 
acquaintance  with  any  science  or  any  depart- 
ment of  literature.  Each  of  these  demands  hard 
study  in  narrow  and  exclusive  lines.  A  great  Ger- 
man grammarian  in  Latin,  reviewing  his  career, 
said  that  if  he  could  begin  his  life  over  again,  he 
should  devote  himself  entirely  to  the  dative  case. 
(Perhaps  he  is  at  it  now,  in  the  next  world.)  If 
a  man  is  ambitious  of  eminence  as  a  leader  or 
master  now  in  any  branch  of  science  or  art,  he 
must  pour  his  power  thus  concentrated  in  a  very 
restricted  groove.  But  to  become  an  appreciative 
reader,  and  to  know  in  pretty  full  outline  the  re- 
sults of  the  best  thinking,  discovery,  and  literary 
productiveness  of  this  globe,  with  a  general  ac- 
quaintance, too,  with  history,  I  repeat  my  belief 
that  a  hundred  volumes,  well  selected  and  read 
carefully  and  repeatedly,  can  make  a  man  of  aver- 
age intelligence  in  this  city  who  can  command  five 


366  Books  and  Reading. 

hours  of  leisure  out  of  the  twenty-four,  better  in- 
formed than  any  except  the  few  supereminent 
literary  men  of  the  land. 

The  prominent  classes  into  which  the  products 
of  the  press  may  be  distributed  are  three.  Books 
of  fact,  books  of  life,  and  books  of  art.  The  first 
class,  or  books  of  fact,  include  all  scientific  trea- 
tises or  manuals  in  which  the  discoveries  in  nature, 
up  to  the  line  of  humanity,  are  registered  and  in- 
terpreted. Books  of  life  include  all  histories  and 
biographies,  and  all  speculations  and  inquiries 
concerning  society,  morals,  and  faith.  In  these 
two  classes  the  substance  of  truth  is  the  all-impor- 
tant thing,  without  regard  to  elegance  of  form  or 
attractiveness  of  arrangement  The  third  class, 
books  of  art,  comprehend  all  the  works  in  verse 
and  prose  in  which  not  abstract  truth,  but  exalted 
pleasure  is  the  object,  in  which  form  is  as  neces- 
sary as  the  matter  itself,  in  which  truth  appears 
robed  in  beauty,  for  purposes  of  inspiration.  In 
this  division,  all  poems  and  dramas,  the  whole 
mass  of  fictitious  literature,  and  every  work  that 
asks  admission  into  the  department  of  belles-let- 
tres, must  be  placed. 

Now  if  a  person  reads  for  information,  not  for 
practical  skill  or  exhaustive  attainment  in  any 
line,  a  very  few  volumes  wisely  selected  from  the 
first  class,  the  books  of  fact,  will  start  a  man  rightly 
on  the  road  of  knowledge,  and  be  an  undrain- 
able  resource  besides.  All  education,  it  seems 
to  me,  should  be  based  on  the  revelations  of  sci- 


Books  and  Reading.  367 

ence  concerning  the  scale  of  space  and  time.  It 
is  a  sad  shame  that  so  little  is  known  by  the  gen- 
eral mind  —  known  "for  certain,"  known  so  as 
to  set  our  life  and  our  interests  in  the  fit  contrasts 
of  glory  and  gloom,  magnificence  and  mystery  — 
of  the  results  of  astronomy  and  geology.  The 
results  may  be  understood  and  appreciated  by 
everybody;  the  processes  by  which  the  results 
are  reached  of  course  can  be  followed  and  com- 
prehended only  by  the  elect  intelligence  among 
men. 

Geology  opens  to  us  the  cellar  department,  and 
astronomy  the  dome,  of  our  home  in  nature. 
Mrs.  Somerville's  "  Connection  of  the  Physical 
Sciences,"  LyelFs  "  Elements  and  Principles  of 
Geology,"  NicolFs  fascinating  work  on  the  Plane- 
tary System,  or  Mitchell's  eloquent  "  Lectures  on 
the  Phenomena  of  the  Heavens,"  or  the  treatise  by 
Buckland,  and  the  masterly  one  by  Whewell  in 
the  Bridgewater  Treatises,  or  parts  of  the  lucid 
and  cheap  series  by  Dr.  Lardner,  in  the  course 
of  one  winter,  if  faithfully  read,  would  stretch  a 
man's  mind  so  that  he  could  not  go  to  his  business 
in  the  morning,  or  see  the  evening  star  steal  out 
from  the  prison  of  daylight,  without  feeling  the 
preparation  that  has  been  made  for  his  existence 
here,  and  the  laws  that  bind  the  order  of  the 
universe. 

No  man  has  a  right  to  go  on  living  in  a  world 
whose  upholstery  is  so  gorgeous  and  foundations 
so  sublime,  without  knowing  something  of  both. 


368  Books  and  Reading. 

Napoleon,  speaking  once  of  courage,  said  that  the 
highest  order  was  "  the  two-o'clock-in-the-morning 
kind,"  —  the  courage  a  man  would  show  in  a  press- 
ing disaster  reported  to  him  when  just  aroused 
from  sleep.  Now  there  are  some  things  which  a 
man  should  know  with  a  two-o'clock-in-the-morn- 
ing knowledge.  Wake  him  from  deep  slumber, 
and  he  ought  to  be  able  to  tell  you  his  birth- 
day, his  age,  how  many  feet  front  his  house-lot 
is,  what  neighbors  live  in  the  same  block  with 
him,  and  what  notes  he  is  to  meet  on  steamer- 
day.  And  he  ought  to  be  able  to  tell  you  as 
clearly  at  once  the  number  of  full-grown  planets 
in  the  solar  system  (of  course  no  one  can  keep 
the  run  of  that  straggling  litter  of  asteroids,  —  the 
pup-orbs  of  the  family),  the  millions  of  miles  which 
the  earth  beats  in  a  year,  the  reach  of  the  sun's 
gravitation,  the  number  of  States,  Territories,  and 
square  miles  in  his  country,  the  salient  facts  and 
dates  of  its  history,  the  probable  number  of  years 
that  the  Mississippi  has  been  running,  and  the 
dead  certainty  that  he  is  against  secession  so  long 
as  the  Mississippi  runs  down  the  line  of  our  cli- 
mates into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  [There  are  some 
planets  within  the  solar  confederacy  that  do  not 
come  out  into  the  visible  order  and  beauty  of  the 
family.  One  has  lately  been  discovered  within 
the  orbit  of  Mercury,  with  a  very  swift,  narrow, 
and  fiery  track,  the  Hotspur,  the  South  Carolina,  of 
the  confederation  ;  it  has  never  been  seen  except 
as  a  round  dot  of  darkness  hurrying  across  the  great 


Books  and  Reading.  369 

sun's  disk  (the  planet  I  am  talking  of);  but  it 
would  not  do  to  let  it  go,  or  to  let  the  sun  swallow 
it.  It  would  be  bad  for  it,  bad  for  the  sun,  and 
bad  for  us.] 

A  man  ought  to  know  all  the  facts  I  have 
alluded  to  with  as  decisive  and  intense  a  convic- 
tion as  if  he  expected  to  be  examined  on  them 
every  year  before  the  school-board  of  San  Fran- 
cisco. A  late  traveller  in  Liberia  tells  us  that 
there  are  inhabitants  there  who  can  see  the  satel- 
lites of  Jupiter  with  the  unassisted  eye.  Every 
person  that  has  had  a  common-school  education 
ought  to  carry  with  him  a  sub-consciousness  of 
the  immensity  of  the  zodiac  and  the  splendors  of 
the  space  in  which  his  life  is  framed. 

And  half  a  dozen  fascinating  books  will  tell  all 
this,  and  the  distance  of  the  nearest  fixed  star, 
and  how  near  Lord  Rosse's  telescope  has  come 
to  seeing  houses  on  the  moon.  All  it  needs  is 
that  they  be  read,  not  as  water  is  poured  upon 
sand,  but  as  water  is  poured  upon  the  root  of  a 
tree,  to  be  absorbed  and  incorporated  into  instinc- 
tive knowledge. 

The  books  of  fact  include  every  department  of 
science,  organic  and  inorganic, —  sciences  offeree 
and  sciences  of  law  ;  and  in  every  department  the 
results  have  been  popularized  for  parlors  as  fast 
as  demonstrated,  and  can  be  understood  and  en- 
joyed by  anybody  who  has  mind  enough  to  cast 
interest  for  months  and  days  at  one  and  a  half  per 
cent.  The  constitution,  laws,  and  speed  of  light 
16* 


370  Books  and  Reading. 

can  be  investigated  and  proved  by  very  few,  but 
anybody  who  can  peel  a  potato  can  enjoy  the  elo- 
quent description  of  their  mystic  witchery.  You 
need  not  drag  the  sea  to  appreciate  Maury's 
entrancing  book  upon  it.  Physical  geography  is 
one  of  the  most  winning  and  simple  of  studies  in 
such  a  work  as  Guyot's  "Earth  and  Man,"  the 
compressed  oil  of  ten  thousand  books  of  travel 
and  the  geological  delving  of  countless  explorers. 
Without  a  tithe  of  the  toil  which  it  would  require 
to  add  by  discovery  or  culture  one  to  the  three 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  species  of  plants 
which  botanists  distinguish,  you  may  learn  their 
classes,  the  processes  of  botanic  growth,  and  the 
laws  of  their  distribution.  And  of  the  two  mil- 
lions of  forms  of  organic  life  which  the  zoologists 
have  enumerated,  though  you  never  hear  or  read 
the  names  of  a  hundred  of  them,  you  may  become 
acquainted  with  the  thoughts  of  the  Creator  which 
they  express,  and  the  exact  plans  of  structure  on 
which  all  the  myriads  have  been  strung  from  this 
hour  back  to  the  morning  of  the  fifth  day  of  the 
creation.  Very  few  of  us  could  learn  to  build 
a  grand  piano.  Not  a  soul  in  this  land  could 
write  a  melody  of  Mozart  any  more  than  he 
could  make  a  nightingale's  throat.  Compara- 
tively few  can  learn  to  play  one,  when  properly 
imbedded  in  its  harmony.  But  how  many  can 
appreciate  and  delight  in  one  when  played !  In 
the  chief  sciences  the  instrument  is  built,  the 
music  is  written,  skilled  performers  are  playing 


Books  and  Reading.  371 

it  to  us  ;  the  question  is  simply  if  we  will  unstop 
our  ears  and  listen. 

Books  of  life,  I  suppose,  are  naturally  more 
attractive  than  books  of  fact,  that  detain  us  out- 
side of  humanity.  History  and  biography  are  the 
prominent  branches  of  this  division  ;  and  in  both 
departments  human  genius  and  industry  seem  to 
have  been  exerted  to  the  utmost  strain,  since  this 
century  began,  to  increase  the  resources  of  easy 
knowledge  and  delight  for  the  average  mind. 

The  most  important  events  in  the  deciphered 
history  of  nations  may  be  gained  in  one  winter's 
reading.  Of  course,  histories  are  an  endless  task  : 
but  history,  its  epochs,  outline,  and  mountain-swells 
of  controlling  and  determining  facts,  is  within  the 
grasp  of  six  months'  consecutive,  interested  read- 
ing in  leisure  hours. 

Of  course,  the  method  would  have  to  be  a  little 
different  from  that  of  the  English  country  gentle- 
man, who,  to  cultivate  his  mind  and  solace  'his 
lonesomeness,  concluded  to  attack  the  "  Vicar  of 
Wakefield"  in  successive  evenings.  He  placed 
the  book-mark  properly  every  night  to  note  his 
progress,  which  was  ten  pages  a  sitting,  and  as 
regularly  a  roguish  niece  put  the  mark  back, 
before  the  next  sitting,  about  eight  pages.  His 
advance  was  almost  as  slow  as  that  of  the  toad  in 
the  well  who  jumped  up  four  feet  and  fell  back 
six.  After  some  months,  however,  the  squire  did 
jump  out  of  his  well,  and  the  niece  asked  him  how 


372  Books  and  Reading. 

he  liked  the  volume.  "  O,  very  well,  but  don't  you 
think  there 's  a  little  repetition  in  it  ? " 

If  we  do  not  put  the  book-mark  back  too  often, 
we  can  learn  the  deepest  facts  and  truths  which 
thirty  centuries  hide,  in  a  year,  so  as  to  have  a 
track  of  twilight,  at  least,  in  our  memory  over  its 
expanse.  How  much  that  one  book  about  the  fif- 
teen decisive  battles  of  the  world,  which  costs  about 
a  dollar,  clears  up  to  a  reader  who  knows  the  gen- 
eral divisions  of  history  and  relations  of  empires  ! 

And  what  can  be  more  refreshing  and  stimu- 
lating than  Prescott's  histories  connected  with 
Spain,  and  Macaulay's  England?  They  ought 
to  be  read  always  in  connection  and  contrast,  to 
learn  something  of  the  art  of  historic  painting, 
and  how  various  are  the  methods  by  which  ability 
of  equal  range  and  level  communicates  itself  and 
produces  its  effects. 

The  first  thing  to  do,  in  reading  either  of  those 
works,  is  to  become  acquainted  with  the  truth 
which  the  authors  have  quarried  for  us  and  ar- 
ranged. But  the  processes  of  arrangement  are  no 
less  interesting  in  their  way  as  studies.  Go  from 
a  chapter  of  Macaulay  to  a  chapter  of  Prescott, 
and  you  are  affected  with  an  unpleasant  sense  of 
thinness  in  the  sentences,  poverty  in  expression, 
commonplace  in  the  reflections,  and  watery  pale- 
ness in  the  color.  Macaulay  is  so  opulent  in  vivid 
detail,  exuberant  in  rhetoric,  affluent  in  discrimi- 
nating logic,  and  the  palette  from  which  he  enlivens 
his  canvas  is  so  rich  with  deep,  strong  Rubens- 


Books  and  Reading.  373 

hues !  You  feel,  in  contrast,  that  it  is  a  very 
limited  dictionary  from  which  Mr.  Prescott  draws  ; 
it  seems  doubtful  if  he  will  be  able  to  find  words 
enough  to  get  through  a  dozen  pages  more  ;  and 
half  his  space  seems  to  be  filled  with  crayon- 
outlines,  because  he  had  not  pigments  enough  for 
his  brush. 

But  read  a  volume  of  each  and  compare  the 
results  in  your  memory  !  How  superior  Prescott 
is  in  the  ability  to  handle  and  dispose  all  the 
facts  of  a  reign,  or  to  open  a  vista  through  the 
entangled  politics  of  a  continent !  He  is  consum- 
mate master  of  historical  perspective.  Macaulay's 
canvas  is  all  foreground,  packed  with  vivid  char- 
acters the  drawing  of  any  one  of  which  is  a  triumph. 
No  man  so  competent  to  finish  a  portrait  in  an 
essay  :  but  his  history  is  a  collection  of  essays  and 
a  succession  of  portraits  ;  and  we  miss  at  the  close 
the  higher  art  which  subordinates  parts,  masses 
and  reduces  detail,  graduates  light,  concentrates 
splendor,  and  gives  the  grateful  impression  of 
large  space,  unity,  and  repose.  In  these  qualities 
of  a  great  historian,  —  in  the  arrangement  of  back- 
ground and  distance,  and  the  relation  of  events 
to  prominent  characters,  and  one  policy,  and  final 
unity  of  impression,  so  that  facts  group  themselves 
into  the  sternest  unspoken  moral,  —  Mr.  Prescott 
is  as  superior  to  Macaulay  as  he  seems  to  be  in- 
ferior in  the  treasury  of  gifts  which  a  historian,  one 
would  think,  requires  as  an  outfit. 

I  must  not  dwell  on  such  points  here,  however, 


374  Books  and  Reading. 

for  they  belong  properly  under  the  last  head 
of  the  lecture.  I  allude  to  it,  in  passing,  to  indi- 
cate the  stores  of  enjoyment  as  well  as  instruction 
at  the  command  of  those  who  read  histories  with 
open  eye.  Each  prominent  name —  Gibbon,  Thirl- 
wall,  Thierry,  Grote,  Guizot,  Merivale,  Milman, 
Michelet,  Carlyle,  Bancroft,  Motley  —  is  a  painter 
on  a  large  scale ;  can  be  compared  with  some 
master  in  the  art  of  color ;  and  yields  from  his 
volumes  the  double  joy,  when  wisely  read,  of  im- 
mense information  and  peculiar  art  in  the  group- 
ing and  illumination  of  it. 

But  the  richest  region  in  the  wide  literature  of 
life  is  the  department  of  biography.  We  need 
science  enough  to  give  us  the  scale  of  our  exist- 
ence here,  and  history  enough  to  show  us  in  a 
general  way  how  old  we  are,  and  who  are  our 
fathers,  and  what  are  the  chief  moral  strata  of 
the  past;  but  it  is  still  true  that  "the  proper 
study  of  mankind  is  man." 

The  readers  may  be  few  who  can  appreciate 
the  kinds  of  genius  displayed  in  the  laying  out 
and  filling  in  of  a  great  history,  but  every 
person  of  moderate  attainments  and  leisure  can 
appreciate  and  enjoy  the  masterpieces  of  biograph- 
ical literature.  If  I  were  to  begin  life  now,  and 
to  lay  anew  the  foundations  of  a  library,  it  should 
be  controllingly  a  biographical  one, — literary  por- 
traits, memoirs,  and  correspondence.  There  is 
no  way  in  which  history  is  taught  so  vividly,  and 
by  which  we  get  so  close  to  the  springs  of  it. 


Books  and  Reading.  375 

There  is  no  way  in  which  so  much  anecdote,  wit, 
vivid  and  sparkling  truth,  can  be  acquired. 
There  is  no  way  in  which  moral  impressions  so 
healthy  and  deep  may  be  left  on  the  conscience 
and  heart. 

And  think  of  it,  each  week  may  introduce 
you  to  some  man  or  woman  of  genius,  —  mon- 
arch, general,  priest,  statesman,  philanthropist, 
scientist,  traveller,  inventor,  discoverer,  poet, 
artist.  You  may  see  his  whole  life  —  the  dawn 
of  his  genius,  his  struggles  and  sorrows,  his 
wrongs  and  triumphs  —  in  the  pomp  of  his  intel- 
lectual strength,  and  in  his  dressing-gown  and 
slippers.  You  may  take  a  look  through  him  at 
his  century  ;  you  may  see  how  he  treats  his  wife 
and  children  ;  you  may  know  what  he  had  for 
dinner  and  the  best  things  he  and  his  guests  gos- 
siped about :  you  may  rummage  even  his  private 
letters.  Eaves -dropping  and  keyhole  listening 
are  contemptible,  unless  we  do  it  at  the  remove 
of  a  generation.  Then  it  is  biography.  The 
queen  is  very  strict  with  the  reception-invitations 
and  etiquette.  St.  James  Street  is  wary  and 
scrupulous  as  to  cards  to  dinner  and  soire'es. 
Wait  a  little  while,  and  the  walls  are  thrown  down 
and  the  rabble  look  on.  Histories  are  the  large 
landscapes.  Biographies  are  the  stereoscopic  in- 
teriors of  the  past. 

The  third  department  of  literature  I  spoke  of 
comprehends  books  of  art,  or  books  in  which  the 


376  Books  and  Reading. 

subjects  are  either  fictitious  and  ideal  or  in 
which  the  form  and  moulding  are  integral  ele- 
ments of  their  value. 

All  novels  are  included  in  this  department. 
This  in  all  popular  libraries  is  the  most  attractive 
alcove.  We  can  see  that  our  city  library  is  no 
exception  ;  for  by  the  monthly  statistics  it  con- 
tinues true  that  about  ten  times  more  works  of 
fiction  are  sought  from  its  store-house  than  from 
any  other  line  of  literature. 

It  is  useless  to  quarrel  with  this  fact,  if  we 
dislike  its  intimations ;  for  it  is  useless  to  quar- 
rel with  a  primal  passion  of  our  being.  And  it 
is  folly  for  any  intelligent  man  to  cast  a  slight,  or 
utter  any  indiscriminate  scorn  against  novels  as 
a  class.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  novels  as  a 
class ;  we  might  as  well  speak  of  human  life  as 
a  class  or  history  as  a  class. 

Fiction  is  a  mighty  branch  of  literature,  includ- 
ing under  it  different  orders,  classes,  genera,  and 
species  of  books.  English  fiction  and  German 
fiction  no  more  belong  to  the  same  species  than 
a  leopard  and  a  hippopotamus.  Modern  French 
fiction  has  a  vitality  as  different  from  the  modern 
Anglo-Saxon  as  the  life  in  a  healthy  body  differs 
from  "  the  worm  that  dieth  not "  in  the  carcass 
due  to  Gehenna.  Sans-Culotteism  in  1789  broke 
up  into  Paris  from  the  pit  of  flame.  The  By- 
ronic  spirit  in  literature  is  often  characterized  as 
the  Satanic  school.  But  as  Milton's  fiend  could 
never  get  to  the  bottom  of  his  abyss,  finding 


Books  and  Reading.  377 

beneath  each  deep  "  a  lower  deep  still  threaten- 
ing to  devour"  him,  we  see  in  the  latest  schools 
of  French  novels  the  presiding  demon  of  all  can- 
cerous corruption  in  the  human  heart,  rising,  not 
from  Stygian  gloom  and  flame,  but  with  appro- 
priate effluvium  from  what  Swedenborg  describes 
to  us  as  the  excrementitibus  hells. 

The  Saxon  intellect  has  hardly  shown  its  rich- 
ness and  soundness  more  marvellously  during  the 
last  sixty  years,  in  the  progress  of  science  and  the 
miracles  of  invention,  than  through  its  fertility  in 
noble  fictions,  from  Scott  and  Miss  Austen  to 
Thackeray,  Dickens,  Kingsley,  and  the  painters  of 
Jane  Eyre,  John  Halifax,  and  Adam  Bede.  Such 
creativeness  has  not  been  known  since  the  age  of 
Shakespeare. 

And  after  biography,  no  reading  can  be  made 
more  profitable,  if  the  substructure  of  education 
has  been  attended  to,  than  novels.  Of  course, 
they  must  be  read  for  something  beyond  sensa- 
tions, —  as  products  of  art  and  of  thought. 

A  library  of  novels  is  like  a  gallery  of  pictures. 
One  man  saunters  through  the  gallery  and  sees 
what  the  pictures  are  about,  —  one  is  a  battle- 
piece,  one  a  sunset  in  Italy,  one  a  love-scene,  one 
a  Madonna,  one  a  mountain-range,  one  a  sea- 
storm.  Another  man  goes  through  the  gallery, 
sits  before  the  chief  pictures,  and  sees  what  the 
artists  were  about,  —  what  is  the  range  of  the  pow- 
ers of  each,  the  degrees  of  their  technical  skill, 
and  the  directions  in  which  they  lie  open  to  the 


378  Books  and  Reading. 

Infinite.  The  first  man  sees  the  paint,  all  of  it ; 
the  second  man  sees  the  paintings.  The  first  has 
whiled  away  an  hour,  and  had  a  sensation ;  the 
last  has  enjoyed  himself  intelligently  and  fed  his 
mind.  Novels  —  good  ones  —  have  all  the  range 
and  all  the  characteristics  of  the  higher  classes  of 
paintings,  —  color,  tone,  grouping,  precision  of 
drawing,  perspective,  and  the  quality  of  the  lesson, 
or  the  elevation  of  spirit,  that  looks  out  through 
all.  And  when  read  with  one  eye  to  the  story  — 
the  left  eye  —  and  the  other  —  the  right  —  to  the 
art  of  the  book,  the  pleasure  is  intellectually  as 
profitable  as  it  is  noble. 

Suppose  an  intelligent  reader  of  Walter  Scott's 
novels  —  one  who  has  gone  through  them  all  two 
or  three  times  —  should  attempt  to  account  to 
himself  for  his  reading,  and  force  himself  to  give 
a  rational  verdict  which  novel,  or  which  triad  of 
them,  shows  the  ripest  power ;  or  suppose  a 
reading-circle  should  devote  two  or  three  evenings 
to  the  point  why  "  Guy  Mannering  "  is  a  greater 
book  than  "  Ivanhoe,"  which  has  more  glitter, 
and  "  The  Heart  of  Mid-Lothian  "  than  "Quentin 
Durward  "  or  "  Count  Robert  of  Paris,"  the  reflec- 
tion and  the  discussion  would  bring  out  into  dis- 
tinct relief  the  real  privileges  of  fiction-reading. 
Nobody  concerned  could  help,  after  that,  perusing 
a  novel  more  carefully. 

Or  let  us  imagine  a  reading-circle  attempting  to 
classify  novels  by  these  tests.  Which  of  them 
deal  most  faithfully  with  the  ultimate  realities  and 


Books  and  Reading.  379 

passions  of  human  nature,  and  which  are  conven- 
tional, drawing  character  within  a  very  narrow  cir- 
cle of  society  and  experience,  or  what  recent 
novelist  deals  most  nobly  with  the  passion  of 
love,  and  what  one  with  the  religious  sentiment  ? 
or  what  is  the  organic  difference  between  the 
methods  of  drawing  a  life-portrait  by  Dickens  and 
by  Thackeray  ?  Still  further,  let  a  reading-circle, 
or  any  devourer  of  books,  propose  these  queries 
for  outward  or  mental  discussion  :  Why  Mr. 
Charles  Reade,  so  brilliant  in  swift  sketches  and 
dialogue,  cannot  unfold  and  develop  a  character 
without  degrading  it ;  why  Copperfield  stands 
head  and  shoulders  above  the  range  of  Mr.  Dick- 
ens's  stones  ;  why  it  is  absurd  and  libellous  (for 
I  believe  it  is  both)  to  say  that  Mr.  Thackeray's 
writings  are  mere  satires,  and  weaken  faith  in  the 
reality  of  virtue  ;  why  the  close  of  Bulwer's  work, 
"What  will  He  do  with  it,"  —  a  work  in  which 
incidents  are  handled,  woven,  and  untangled  with 
such  a  masterly  hand,  —  is  such  an  unmitigated 
piece  of  snobbery  that  one  feels  like  pitching 
book  and  author  into  a  region  where  types  are 
nevermore  set  up ;  why  "  Charles  Auchester  '* 
must  have  been  written  with  ink  weakened  by 
milk-and-water;  why  Mrs.  Stowe's  "Dred,"  the 
first  volume  of  which  is  by  far  the  grandest  volume 
she  has  written,  runs  down  so  swiftly  into  weak- 
ness and  failure  in  the  second  ;  why  the  draw- 
ing of  Rochester,  so  melodramatic  in  attitudes  and 
color,  is  the  feeblest  portion,  intellectually,  of  a 


380  Books  and  Reading. 

book  which  is  more  marvellous  on  the  tenth  read- 
ing than  on  the  first,  — Jane  Eyre  ;  and  wherein 
consists  the  literary  art  by  which  Miss  Brontd 
could  describe  the  furniture  of  a  room  and  a 
sleety  day  so  that  they  are  more  vivid  than  light 
and  experience  could  make  them ;  why  the  au- 
thoress of  "Adam  Bede"  is  the  most  eminent 
of  living  feminine  English  novelists,  and  why  the 
largeness  of  handling,  the  freedom  from  all  spasm, 
the  reserve,  and  the  depth  of  moral  space  out  of 
which  each  character  shines  like  a  star  from  the 
boundless  blue,  make  it  superior  to  the  more  nar- 
row, more  coarse,  a  little  more  bitter,  though  still 
very  able  and  vigorous,  "  Mill  on  the  Floss." 

These  hap-hazard  queries  relate  rather  to  the 
artistic  qualities  of  novels,  and  show  by  casual 
suggestion  how  varied  and  deep  they  are.  The 
moral  interests  in  all  eminent  and  decent  fiction 
is  no  less.  What  is  more  dreary  than  moral 
philosophy,  or  the  abstract  discussion  of  questions 
of  ethics  bearing  on  the  grades  of  sentiments  and 
conflicts  of  duties  ?  But  no  question  was  ever 
raised,  possibly,  by  the  acutest  casuist  which  has 
not  been  set  at  work  vitally  and  dramatically  in 
some  modern  novel.  And  if  all  novel-readers 
were  compelled,  when  they  close  a  book,  to  write 
out  the  main  doctrine  or  proposition  which  is  the 
axis  of  the  incidents  and  plot,  it  would  be  better 
for  their  moral  education  than  if  they  could  listen 
once  a  week  to  the  best  lecture  on  ethics  that  is 
delivered  by  the  foremost  professor  in  civilization. 


Books  and  Reading.  381 

One  of  the  most  practical,  impressive,  and 
strong-headed  preachers  in  this  country  is  a  con- 
stant student  of  novels.  They  are  the  staple  of  his 
reading.  They  furnish  him  with  a  museum  of  char- 
acters, and  with  revelations  of  the  status  and  needs 
of  modern  society  which  no  other  reading  could 
furnish.  He  sees  the  world,  he  tastes  life,  by 
means  of  them,  as  we  all  may,  if  we  will  approach 
them  for  something  besides  their  pepper  and  salt, 
for  what  their  condiments  merely  flavor.  And 
I  have  often  thought  that  the  pulpit  could  not  do 
better  with  one  sermon  in  every  quarter,  than  by 
preaching  on  the  health  or  disease  of  the  most 
prominent  novel  which  all  parishioners  are  read- 
ing, and  showing  wherein  and  how  far  its  main 
characters  illustrate  or  reject  the  spirit  of  life 
which  glows  through  the  incidents  of  the  four 
Gospels  from  "  the  Word  made  flesh." 

In  other  departments  of  books  of  art,  in  all 
the  bigher  forms  of  prose  and  in  poetry,  the  key 
to  the  richest  enjoyment  is  a  sensitive  taste  for 
style,  for  differences  and  peculiarities  in  richness, 
melody,  and  rhythm. 

It  is  said  that,  with  his  eyes  shut,  a  man  could 
not  tell  the  difference  between  beef  and  mutton, 
veal  and  rabbit,  pork  and  elk.  Let  them  be  put 
in  his  mouth  without  seeing  or  smelling,  and  his 
tongue  could  not  tell  "  which  is  which."  It  may 
be  so,  but  it  is  no  reason  why  a  man  cannot  tell, 
and  ought  not  to  be  able  to  tell,  with  his  eyes 
open. 


382  Books  and  Reading. 

There  are  persons  who  seem  to  be  utterly  im- 
pervious to  the  flavors  of  literature.  One  book 
reads  as  much  like  another,  to  them,  as  one  mul- 
tiplication-table like  another.  But  since  the  first 
book  was  written  which  belongs  in  the  artistic 
region,  no  two  styles  are  alike.  They  differ  even 
in  prose,  as  faces,  forms,  gaits,  differ.  They  differ 
because  souls  differ.  No  two  living  books,  to  the 
end  of  time,  will  have  the  same  style.  Often  the 
very  best  and  most  precious  thing  about  a  noble 
book  is  its  style.  It  is,  as  to  its  matter,  what  the 
atmosphere  is  to  a  landscape  in  Southern  Italy. 
Banish  its  unctuous  opaline  lusciousness,  and 
hang  a  New  Hampshire  air  over  it,  and  see  how 
much  is  gone.  Strip  the  style  off  and  leave  the 
matter  in  Mr.  De  Quincey's  essays,  and  you  would 
find  that  it  is  like  taking  the  sound  out  of  a  grove 
of  pines. 

This  miracle  of  style  has  not  been  sounded 
yet,  —  why,  when  one  man  writes  a  fact,  it  is  cold 
or  commonplace,  and  when  another  man  writes 
it,  in  a  little  different,  but  equivalent  phraseology, 
it  is  a  rifle-shot  or  a  revelation.  One  can 
understand  a  little  how  the  wink  or  twinkle  of 
an  eye,  how  an  attitude,  how  a  gesture,  how  a 
cadence  or  impassioned  sweep  of  voice,  should 
make  a  boundless  distance  between  truths  stated 
or  declaimed.  But  how  words,  locked  up  in 
forms,  still  and  stiff  in  sentences,  contrive  to  tip 
a  wink,  how  a  proposition  will  insinuate  more 
scepticism  than  it  states,  how  a  paragraph  will 


Books  and  Reading.  383 

drip  with  the  honey  of  love,  how  a  phrase  will 
trail  an  infinite  suggestion,  how  a  page  can  be  so 
serene  or  so  gusty,  so  gorgeous  or  so  pallid,  so 
sultry  or  so  cool,  as  to  lap  you  in  one  intellectual 
climate  or  its  opposite,  —  who  has  fathomed  yet 
this  wonder  ? 

"  The  style  is  the  man."  Education  for  enjoy- 
ing and  fathoming  books  of  art  consists  in  becom- 
ing sensitive  to  their  air  and  music.  There  are 
elements  in  Hawthorne's  romances,  all  of  them, 
as  repulsive  to  me  as  anything,  not  openly  im- 
moral, in  literature.  But  his  style,  so  sweet, 
natural,  genial,  perspicuous,  easy  in  its  most  curi- 
ous felicities,  the  purest  and  most  artistic  Eng- 
lish, I  believe,  written  by  any  pen  in  a  living 
hand  to-day,  —  English  of  a  higher  order  even 
than  Washington  Irving's,  though  akin  to  Irving's 
in  showing  something  of  "  that  sleepy  smile  that 
lies  so  benignly  on  the  sweet  and  serious  diction 
of  old  Izaak  Walton,"  —  this  makes  me  love  his 
genius,  and  believe  that  it  is  destined  for  richer 
service  yet  in  the  universe,  when  the  unhealthy 
spot  shall  be  taken  by  the  proper  medicine  or 
surgery  out  of  his  soul. 

A  man  with  leisure  and  a  tendency  to  reading, 
who  has  no  appreciation  of  the  subtleties  of 
grace  and  meaning  in  styles,  is  to  be  pitied  as  a 
man  is  to  be  commiserated  to  whom  a  banana 
and  lemon  taste  alike,  and  who  should  eat  the 
berries  and  fruits  of  summer  —  apricots  and 
plums,  Bartletts  and  early  Crawirords  —  as  a  turkey 


384  Books  and  Reading. 

gobbles  oats  and  corn.  How  often  I  have 
heard  people  class  Mr.  Emerson  and  Carlyle 
together,  and  say  that  one  borrowed  from  the 
other,  —  men  whose  philosophy  of  life  bear  as 
much  resemblance  as  a  tropic  thunder-storm  and 
an  arctic  night,  and  whose  styles  are  as  much 
alike  as  the  light  of  a  pitch-pine  knot  blazing 
and  smoking  in  a  wild  mountain  pass  and  an 
icicle  hanging  with  still,  clear,  pitiless  brilliance 
in  a  winter  noon. 

I  cannot  enlarge  upon  this  point  with  illustra- 
tions to  enforce  it ;  but  can  only  say  that  it 
applies  to  poetry  as  manifestly,  at  least,  as  to 
prose. 

One  of  the  strangest  things  which  a  deep  stu- 
dent of  Shakespeare  learns  is  the  variety  of  his 
music  and  rhythm  in  the  same  ten-syllable  blank- 
verse.  No  other  writer  of  his  age  commanded 
such  music ;  and  the  movement  and  measure  of 
his  Macbeth  and  Romeo,  Hamlet  and  Antony, 
Lear  and  Tempest,  are  as  different  as  if  different 
writers  —  on  the  Shakespeare  level  —  had  given 
each  the  training  of  a  life  to  one  of  these  plays. 
And  in  each  case  the  movement  or  melody  is  a 
subtle  accompaniment  to  the  passion  or  the  law 
that  informs  and  ensouls  the  piece. 

The  reason  why  Goethe  cannot  be  translated  is 
that  no  equal  Goethe  stands  on  the  English  side 
of  the  line  to  link  the  equivalent  words  with 
equivalent  music.  The  process  of  rendering 
Goethe  or  Beranger  into  another  tongue  is  that 


Books  and  Reading.  385 

which  a  German,  not  over-familiar  with  our 
phrases,  uses  to  describe  translation ;  he  says 
such  a  German  book  has  been  "upset  into 
English." 

A  reader  with  an  ear  for  melody  has  a  feast 
spread  for  him  in  Saxon  poetry  fit  for  Apollo. 
Many  a  person  imagines  that  a  poet's  office  is 
akin  to  that  of  wood-sawyers,  —  that  it  is  their 
business  to  saw  up  language  into  measure,  and 
pile  it  even  and  gracefully,  rhymed  at  the  end. 
But  with  the  ear  for  rhythm,  Milton  and  Words- 
worth, Coleridge  and  Shelley,  Keats  and  Tenny- 
son, are  richer  than  an  organ  in  the  house.  It 
was  Hood,  I  believe,  who  divided  poetry  into  two 
kinds,  "  verse  and  worse."  The  verse  is  what  has 
melody,  that  which  has  it  not  is  worse.  Charles 
Mackay's  verses  seem  as  though  they  were  com- 
posed on  an  even,  hard-trotting  horse  upon  a 
macadamized  road.  Whittier  writes  as  though 
a  trumpet  was  continually  sounding  through  his 
Quaker  soul.  What  an  advance  in  melody  in 
Longfellow,  from  the  "  Voices  of  the  Night,"  with 
its  "  sweet-sixteen  "  poetry  and  sentiment,  to  some 
of  the  chapters  of  "  Hiawatha  "  and  his  last  lyric 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  "  Paul  Revere's  Ride  " ! 
What  exquisite  meditative  imagination  in  the 
slow  sinuous  harmony  of  Bryant's  "  Thanatopsis  "  ! 
Coleridge  —  and  in  this  respect  Edgar  Poe  was 
like  him  —  seemed  to  write  fragments  only  to 
show  how  superior  is  the  suggestion  of  sound  to 
the  expression  of  sense  in  verse.  Shelley's  words, 


386  Books  and  Reading. 

in  many  of  his  songs,  appear  to  stand  there  simply 
to  prevent  the  melody  from  melting  into  utter 
spirit.  And  Tennyson's  "  Idyls  of  the  King,"  the 
crowning  work  of  his  genius,  needs  the  rarest 
voices  that  have  been  attuned  oa  the  globe  to 
read  it,  and  set  free  the  melody  healthy  and  del- 
icate as  the  echoes  which  his  own  Bugle  Song 
describes :  — 

"  O  hark,  O  hear,  how  thin  and  clear, 
And  thinner,  clearer,  farther  going, 
O  sweet  and  far,  from  cliff  and  scar, 
The  horns  of  Elfland  faintly  blowing." 

So  from  souls  on  the  western  shore  of  the  Atlantic, 
and  from  the  borders  of  the  Pacific,  too,  the  echoes 
return  of  his  genius. 

And  here  we  must  pause.  The  distance  of  a 
star,  the  age  of  the  planet,  the  flow  of  history,  the 
stores  of  biography,  the  vast  and  crowded  spaces 
of  fiction,  the  richest  music  borne  from  infinite 
deeps  through  the  rarest  pipes  of  genius,  —  such 
knowledge,  such  society,  such  inspiration,  or  such 
solace  may  be  ours  through  a  library  of  a  hundred 
books  ;  no  more.  If  you  have  taste,  you  may  find 
leisure  to  win  something  of  the  luxury  of  truth  or  art 
in  the  busiest  life  for  the  uplifting  of  your  spirit. 

Mrs.  Browning  in  one  of  her  early  poems,  "  A 
Vision  of  Poets,"  describes  a  church  she  saw  in  a 
dream,  and  the  approach  of  the  great  masters  of 
verse  and  passion  at  midnight  up  its  aisles  to  its 
altar :  — 

"  Here  Homer,  with  the  broad  suspense 
Of  thunderous  brows,  and  lips  intense 
Of  garrulous  god-innocence. 


Books  and  Reading.  387 

"  There  Shakespeare,  on  whose  forehead  climb 
The  crowns  o'  the  world.     O  eyes  sublime, 
With  tears  and  laughters  for  all  time  ! 

"  Electric  Pindar,  quick  as  fear, 
With  race-dust  on  his  cheeks,  and  clear, 
Slant,  startled  eyes  that  seem  to  hear 
The  chariot  rounding  the  last  goal. 

"  Lucretius,  nobler  than  his  mood ; 
Who  dropped  his  plummet  down  the  broad 
Deep  universe,  and  said,  '  No  God,' 

"  Finding  no  bottom :  he  denied 
Divinely  the  divine,  and  died 
Chief  poet  on  the  Tiber-side. 

"  And  Ossian  dimly  seen  or  guessed  ; 
Once  counted  greater  than  the  rest, 
When  mountain-winds  blew  out  his  vest. 

"  And  Goethe,  with  that  reaching  eye 
His  soul  looked  out  from,  far  and  high, 
And  fell  from  inner  entity. 

"  And  Schiller,  with  heroic  front, 
Worthy  of  Plutarch's  kiss  upon  't, 
Too  large  for  wreath  of  modern  wont. 

"  Here  Milton's  eyes  strike  piercing-dim, 
The  shapes  of  suns  and  stars  did  swim 
Like  clouds  from  them,  and  granted  him 
God  for  sole  vision. 

"  And  Burns,  with  pungent  passionings 
Set  in  his  eyes.     Deep  lyric  springs 
Are  of  the  fire-mount's  issuings. 

"  And  poor,  proud  Byron,  —  sad  as  grave 
And  salt  as  life :  forlornly  brave, 
And  quivering  with  the  dart  he  drave. 


388  Books  and  Reading. 

"  And  visionary  Coleridge,  who 
Did  sweep  his  thoughts  as  angels  do 
Their  wings,  with  cadence  up  the  blue. 

"  These  poets  faced,  and  many  more, 
The  lighted  altar  looming  o'er 
The  clouds  of  incense  dim  and  hoar. 

"  And  all  their  faces  in  the  lull 
Of  natural  things  looked  wonderful 
With  life,  and  death,  and  deathless  rule." 

And  such  an  altar  we  may  have  in  our  memory 
and  our  inner  being,  where  all  these  men,  and 
others,  the  priests  of  science  and  the  great  ser- 
vants of  good,  shall  be  our  companions,  teachers, 
and  friends.  The  title  to  it  is  taste  for  literature, 
reading  with  our  eyes  open,  reading  with  rigid 
selection  and  exclusion,  reading  with  a  sense  of 
its  privilege,  reading  for  an  end. 

1861. 


XI. 

THE  PRIVILEGE  AND  DUTIES  OF  PATRIOTISM.* 

LET  us  waste  no  words  in  introduction  or 
preface.  I  am  to  speak  to  you  of  the  Priv- 
ilege and  Duties  of  American  Patriotism. 

First  the  Privilege.  Patriotism  is  love  of 
country.  It  is  a  privilege  that  we  are  capable 
of  such  a  sentiment.  Self-love  is  the  freezing- 
point  in  the  temperature  of  the  world.  As  the 
heart  is  kindled  and  ennobled  it  pours  out  feeling 
and  interest,  first  upon  family  and  kindred,  then 
upon  country,  then  upon  humanity.  The  home, 
the  flag,  the  cross,  —  these  are  the  representatives 
or  symbols  of  the  noblest  and  most  sacred  affec- 
tions or  treasures  of  feeling  in  human  nature. 

We  sometimes  read  arguments  by  very  strict 
moralists  which  cast  a  little  suspicion  upon  the 
value  of  patriotism  as  a  virtue,  for  the  reason  that 
the  law  of  love,  unrestricted  love,  should  be  our 
guide  and  inspiration.  We  must  be  cosmopolitan 
by  our  sympathy,  they  prefer  to  say.  Patriotism, 
if  it  interferes  with  the  wider  spirit  of  humanity,  is 

*  From  an  Address  before  the  "  Sumner  Light  Guard,"  No- 
vember 1 8,  1862. 


3QO   The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism. 

sectionalism  of  the  heart.  We  must  not  give  up 
to  country  "  what  is  meant  for  mankind." 

Such  sentiments  may  be  uttered  in  the  interest 
of  Christian  philanthropy,  but  they  are  not  healthy. 
The  Divine  method  in  evoking  our  noblest  affec- 
tions is  always  from  particulars  to  generals.  God 
"  hath  set  the  solitary  in  families,"  and  bound  the 
families  into  Communities,  and  organized  commu- 
nities into  nations ;  and  he  has  ordained  special 
duties  for  each  of  these  relationships,  and  inspired 
affections  to  prompt  the  discharge  of  them^  and 
to  exalt  the  character. 

The  law  of  love  is  the  principle  of  the  spiritual 
universe  just  as  gravitation  is  the  governing  force 
of  space.  It  binds  each  particle  of  matter  to 
every  other  particle,  but  it  attracts  inversely  as 
the  square  of  the  distance,  and  thus  becomes 
practically  a  series  of  local  or  special  forces,  hold- 
ing our  feet  perpetually  to  one  globe,  and  allowing 
only  a  general  unity,  which  the  mind  appropriates 
through  science  and  meditation,  with  the  kindred 
but  far-off  spheres.  The  man  that  has  most  of 
the  sentiment  of  love  will  have  the  most  intense 
special  affections.  You  cannot  love  the  whole 
world  and  nobody  in  particular.  If  you  try  that, 
it  will  be  true  of  you  as  of  the  miser  who  said, 
"  what  I  give  is  nothing  to  nobody."  However 
deep  his  baptism  in  general  good-will,  a  man  must 
look  with  a  thrill  that  nothing  else  can  awaken, 
into  the  face  of  the  mother  that  bore  him  \  he 
cannot  cast  off  the  ties  that  bind  him  to  filial 


The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism.  391 

responsibilities  and  a  brother's  devotion ;  and 
Providence  has  ordained  that  out  of  identity  of 
race,  a  common  history,  the  same  scenery,  litera- 
ture, laws,  and  aims,  —  though  in  perfect  harmony 
with  good-will  to  all  men,  —  the  wider  family 
feeling,  the  distinctive  virtue,  patriotism,  should 
spring.  If  the  ancient  Roman  could  believe  that 
the  yellow  Tiber  was  the  river  dearest  to  Heaven  ; 
if  the  Englishman  can  see  a  grandeur  in  the 
Thames  which  its  size  will  not  suggest ;  if  the  Al- 
pine storm-wind  is  a  welcome  home-song  to  the 
Swiss  mountaineer;  if  the  Laplander  believes  that 
his  country  is  the  best  the  sun  shines  upon ;  if  the 
sight  of  one's  own  national  flag  in  other  lands  will 
at  once  awaken  feelings  that  speed  the  blood  and 
melt  the  eyes ;  if  the  poorest  man  will  sometimes 
cherish  a  proud  consciousness  of  property  in  the 
great  deeds  that  glow  upon  his  country's  annals 
and  the  monuments  of  its  power,  —  let  us  confess 
that  the  heart  of  man,  made  for  the  Christian  law, 
was  made  also  to  contract  a  special  friendship  for 
its  native  soil,  its  kindred  stock,  its  ancestral 
traditions,  —  let  us  not  fail  to  see  that  where  the 
sentiment  of  patriotism  is  not  deep,  a  sacred 
affection  is  absent,  an  essential  element  of  virtue 
is  wanting,  and  religion  barren  of  one  prominent 
witness  of  its  sway. 

But  why  argue  in  favor  of  patriotism  as  a 
lofty  virtue  ?  History  refuses  to  countenance  the 
analytic  ethics  of  spiritual  dreamers.  It  pushes 
into  notice  Leonidas,  Tell,  Cincinnatus,  Camillus, 


392   The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism. 

Hampden,  Winkelried,  Scipio,  Lafayette,  Adams, 
Bolivar,  and  Washington,  in  whom  the  sentiment 
has  become  flesh,  and  gathered  to  itself  the  world's 
affections  and  honors.  It  asks  us,  "  What  do  you 
say  of  these  men  ?  These  are  among  the  brighter 
jewels  of  my  kingdom.  Thousands  of  millions 
fade  away  into  the  night  in  my  realm,  but  these 
souls  shine  as  stars,  with  purer  lustre  as  they  re- 
treat into  the  blue  of  time.  Is  not  their  line  of 
greatness  as  legitimate  as  that  of  poets,  philoso- 
phers, philanthropists,  and  priests  ? " 

Nay,  the  Bible  is  opened  for  us,  to  stimulate 
and  increase  our  love  of  country.  Patriotism  is 
sanctioned  and  commended  and  illustrated  there 
by  thrilling  examples  :  —  by  the  great  patriot- 
prophet  Moses,  who,  during  all  those  wilderness- 
years,  bore  the  Hebrew  people  in  his  heart;  by 
Joshua,  who  sharpened  his  sword  on  the  tables 
of  stone  till  its  edge  was  keen  as  the  righteous 
wrath  of  Heaven  and  its  flame  fierce  as  a  flash 
from  Sinai,  as  it  opened  a  path  through  an  idola- 
trous land  for  the  colonization  of  a  worthier  race 
and  a  clean  idea ;  (O  that  there  were  enough  of 
that  steel  in  America  to-day  to  make  a  sword  for 
the  leader  of  the  Union  armies!)  by  the  great 
statesman  Samuel,  to  whom  every  Jew  may  point 
with  pride  as  the  Hebrew  Washington  ;  by  David, 
who,  for  the  glory  of  his  nation,  wielded  the  hero's 
sw6rd  and  tuned  the  poet's  harp ;  by  the  long  line 
of  the  fire-tongued  prophets,  whose  hearts  burned 
for  their  country's  redemption  while  they  pro- 


The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism.   393 

claimed  the  "  higher  law " ;  by  the  lyric  singers 
of  the  exile,  like  him  who  chanted  the  lament, 
which  seems  to  gush  from  the  very  heart  of  patri- 
otism, "  How  shall  we  sing  the  Lord's  song  in 
a  strange  land?  If  I  forget  thee,  O  Jerusalem,  let 

my  right  hand  forget  her  cunning Let  my 

tongue  cleave  to  the  roof  of  my  mouth,  if  I  prefer 
not  Jerusalem  above  my  chief  joy  !  " 

Yes,  and  when  we  pass  higher  up  than  these 
worthies  of  the  older  inspiration,  to  Him  the 
highest  name,  Him  from  whom  we  have  received 
our  deepest  life,  Him  whose  love  embraced  the 
whole  race  in  its  scope,  the  eternal  and  impartial 
Love  made  flesh,  who  pronounced  the  parable  of 
the  Good  Samaritan,  and  shed  the  warmth  of  that 
spirit  through  his  life  into  the  frosty  air  of  human 
sentiment,  do  we  not  read  that  he  felt  more  keenly 
the  alienation  of  his  countrymen  according  to  the 
flesh  than  he  felt  the  spear-point  and  the  nails, 
and  paused  over  the  beautiful  city  of  David  to 
utter  a  lament  whose  burden  swept  away  the  pros- 
pect of  his  own  lowering  destiny, — "O  Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem,  ....  how  often  would  I  have  gathered 
your  children  together,  even  as  a  hen  gathereth 
her  chickens  under  her  wings,  and  ye  would 
not.  Behold,  your  house  is  left  unto  you  deso- 
late." 

Although  the  highest  office  of  revelation  is  to 
point  to  and  prepare  us  for  "a  better  country,  even 
a  heavenly,"  no  one  can  rightly  read  the  pages 
of  the  Bible  without  catching  enthusiasm  for  his 


394  The  Privilege  and  Ditties  of  Patriotism. 

earthly  country,  the  land  of  his  fathers,  the  shelter 
of  his  infancy,  the  hope  of  his  children. 

It  is  a  privilege  of  our  nature,  hardly  to  be 
measured,  that  we  are  capable  of  the  emotion  of 
patriotism,  that  we  can  feel  a  nation's  life  in  our 
veins,  rejoice  in  a  nation's  glory,  suffer  for  a 
nation's  momentary  shame,  throb  with  a  nation's 
hope.  It  is  as  if  each  particle  of  matter  that 
belongs  to  a  mountain,  each  crystal  hidden  in  its 
darkness,  each  grass-blade  on  its  lower  slopes, 
each  pebble  amid  its  higher  desolation,  each 
snow-flake  of  its  cold  and  tilted  fields,  could  be 
conscious,  all  the  time,  of  the  whole  bulk  and 
symmetry  and  majesty  and  splendor  of  the  pile, — 
of  how  it  glows  at  evening,  of  how  it  blazes  at  the 
first  touch  of  morning  light,  of  its  pride  when  it 
overtops  the  storm,  of  the  joy  it  awakens  in  hearts 
that  see  in  it  the  power  and  glory  of  the  Creator. 
It  is  as  if  each  could  exult  in  feeling  —  I  am  part 
of  this  organized  majesty ;  I  am  an  element  in 
one  flying  buttress  of  it,  or  its  firm-poised  peak ; 
I  contribute  to  this  frosty  radiance ;  I  am  enno- 
bled by  the  joy  it  awakens  in  every  beholder's 
breast ! 

Think  of  a  man  living  in  one  of  the  illustrious 
civilized  communities  of  the  world,  and  insensi- 
ble to  its  history,  honor,  and  future,  —  say  of 
England  !  Think  of  an  intelligent  inhabitant 
of  England  so  wrapped  in  selfishness  that  he 
has  no  consciousness  of  the  mighty  roots  of  that 
kingdom,  nor  of  the  toughness  of  its  trunk,  nor 


The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism .  395 

of  the  spread  of  its  gnarled  boughs !  Runny- 
mede  and  Agincourt  are  behind  him,  but  he  is 
insensible  to  the  civil  triumph  and  the  knightly 
valor.  All  the  literature  that  is  crowned  by 
Bacon,  Shakespeare,  and  Milton,  the  noblest  this 
earth  ever  produced  from  one  national  stock, 
awakens  in  him  no  heart-beat  of  pride.  He 
reads  of  the  sturdy  blows  in  the  great  rebellion, 
and  of  the  gain  to  freedom  by  the  later  and  more 
quiet  revolution,  and  it  is  no  more  to  him  than 
if  the  record  had  been  dropped  from  another 
planet.  The  triumphs  of  English  science  over 
nature,  the  hiss  of  her  engines,  the  whirl  of  her 
wheels,  the  roar  of  her  factory  drums,  the  crackle 
of  her  furnaces,  the  beat  of  her  hammers,  the 
vast  and  chronic  toil  that  mines  her  treasures, 
affect  him  with  no  wonder  and  arouse  no  exult- 
ant thrill  of  partnership.  And  he  sees  nothing 
and  feels  nothing  that  stirs  his  torpid  blood  in 
the  strokes  and  sweep  of  that  energy,  before 
which  the  glory  of  Waterloo  and  Trafalgar  is 
dim,  which  has  knit  to  the  English  will  colonies 
and  empires  within  a  century  which  number 
nearly  one  fourth  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  globe. 
The  red  flag  of  England  hung  out  on  all  her 
masts,  from  all  her  housetops,  and  from  every 
acre  of  her  conquests  and  possessions,  would 
almost  give  this  planet  the  color  of  Mars,  if  seen 
through  a  telescope  from  a  neighboring  star. 
What  a  privilege  to  be  a  conscious  fibre  of  that 
compacted  force !  If  I  were  an  Englishman,  I 


396  The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism. 

should  be  proud  every  hour  of  every  day  over  my 
heritage.  I  believe  I  should  now  and  then  imitate 
the  man  who  sat  up  all  night  to  hate  his  brother- 
in-law,  and  sit  up  all  night  to  exult  in  my  privi- 
lege. And  as  an  Englishman  I  should  keep  clear 
of  the  pollution  of  sympathy  with  the  American 
rebellion.  The  man  who  is  dead  to  such  pride 
ought  not  to  be  rated  as  a  man. 

And  is  it  any  less  a  privilege  to  be  an  Ameri- 
can ?  Suppose  that  the  continent  could  turn  to- 
wards you  to-morrow  at  sunrise,  and  show  to 
you  the  whole  American  area  in  the  short  hours 
of  the  sun's  advance  from  Eastport  to  the  Pacific ! 
You  would  see  New  England  roll  into  light  from 
the  green  plumes  of  Aroostook  to  the  silver  stripe 
of  the  Hudson ;  westward  thence  over  the  Em- 
pire State,  and  over  the  lakes,  and  over  the  sweet 
valleys  of  Pennsylvania,  and  over  the  prairies, 
the  morning  blush  would  run  and  would  waken 
all  the  line  of  the  Mississippi ;  from  the  frosts 
where  it  rises,  to  the  fervid  waters  in  which  it 
pours,  for  three  thousand  miles  it  would  be  visi- 
ble, fed  by  rivers  that  flow  from  every  mile  of 
the  Alleghany  slope,  and  edged  by  the  green 
embroideries  of  the  temperate  and  tropic  zones ; 
beyond  this  line  another  basin,  too,  the  Missouri, 
catching  the  morning,  leads  your  eye  along  its 
western  slope  till  the  Rocky  Mountains  burst 
upon  the  vision,  and  yet  do  not  bar  it ;  across 
its  passes  we  must  follow,  as  the  stubborn  cour- 
age of  American  pioneers  has  forced  its  way,  till 


The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism.  397 

again  the  Sierra  and  their  silver  veins  are  tinted 
along  the  mighty  bulwark  with  the  break  of  day ; 
and  then  over  to  the  gold-fields  of  the  western 
slope,  and 'the  fatness  of  the  California  soil,  and 
the  beautiful  valleys  of  Oregon,  and  the  stately 
forests  of  Washington,  the  eye  is  drawn,  as  the 
globe  turns  out  of  the  night-shadow,  and  when 
the  Pacific  waves  are  crested  with  radiance,  you 
have  the  one  blending  picture,  nay,  the  reality, 
of  the  American  domain  !  No  such  soil,  so  varied 
by  climate,  by  products,  by  mineral  riches,  by  for- 
est and  lake,  by  wild  heights  and  buttresses,  and 
by  opulent  plains,  —  yet  all  bound  into  unity  of 
configuration  and  bordered  by  both  warm  and 
icy  seas,  —  no  such  domain  was  ever  given  to 
one  people. 

And  then  suppose  that  you 'could  see  in  a  pic- 
ture as  vast  and  vivid  the  preparation  for  our 
inheritance  of  this  land  :  —  Columbus  haunted  by 
his  round  idea  and  setting  sail  in  a  sloop  to  see 
Europe  sink  behind  him,  while  he  was  serene  in 
the  faith  of  his  dream ;  the  later  navigators  of 
every  prominent  Christian  race  who  explored  the 
upper  coasts  ;  the  Mayflower  with  her  cargo  of 
sifted  acorns  from  the  hardy  stock  of  British 
puritanism,  and  the  ship,  whose  name  we  know 
not,  that  bore  to  Virginia  the  ancestors  of  Wash- 
ington ;  the  clearing  of  the  wilderness,  and  the 
dotting  of  its  clearings  with  the  proofs  of  manly 
wisdom  and  Christian  trust ;  then  the  gradual  in- 
terblending  of  effort  and  interest  and  sympathy 


398   The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism. 

into  one  life,  the  congress  of  the  whole  Atlantic 
slope  to  resist  oppression  upon  one  member,  the 
rally  of  every  State  around  Washington  and  his 
holy  sword,  and  again  the  nobler  rally  around 
him  when  he  signed  the  Constitution,  and  after 
that  the  organization  of  the  farthest  West  with 
North  and  South  into  one  polity  and  communion ; 
when  this  was  finished,  the  tremendous  energy  of 
free  life,  under  the  stimulus  and  with  the  aid 
of  advancing  science,  in  increasing  wealth,  sub- 
duing the  wilds  to  the  bonds  of  use,  multiplying 
fertile  fields,  and  busy  schools,  and  noble  work- 
shops, and  churches  hallowed  by  free-will  offer- 
ings of  prayer,  and  happy  homes,  and  domes 
dedicated  to  the  laws  of  states  that  rise  by  magic 
from  the  haunts  of  the  buffalo  and  deer,  all  in 
less  than  a  long  lifetime;  and  if  we  could  see 
also  how,  in  achieving  this,  the  flag  which  repre- 
sents all  this  history  is  dyed  in  traditions  of 
exploits,  by  land  and  sea,  that  have  given  heroes 
to  American  annals  whose  names  are  potent  to 
conjure  with,  while  the  world's  list  of  thinkers 
in  matter  is  crowded  with  the  names  of  American 
inventors,  and  the  higher  rolls  of  literary  merit 
are  not  empty  of  the  title  of  our  "  representative 
men  "  :  —  if  all  that  the  past  has  done  for  us  and 
the  present  reveals  could  thus  stand  apparent  in 
one  picture,  and  then  if  the  promise  of  the  future 
to  the  children  of  our  millions  under  our  common 
law,  and  with  continental  peace,  could  be  caught 
in  one  vast  spectral  exhibition,  the  wealth  in 


The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism.  399 

store,  the  power,  the  privilege,  the  freedom,  the 
learning,  the  expansive  and  varied  and  mighty 
unity  in  fellowship,  almost  fulfilling  the  poets 
dream  of 

"  The  Parliament  of  man,  the  federation  of  the  world," 

you  would  exclaim  with  exultation,  *'I,  too,  am 
an  American !  "  You  would  feel  that  patriotism, 
next  to  your  tie  to  the  Divine  Love,  is  the  great- 
est privilege  of  your  life  ;  and  you  would  devote 
yourselves,  out  of  inspiration  and  joy,  to  the  obli- 
gations of  patriotism,  that  this  land  so  spread,  so 
adorned,  so  colonized,  so  blessed,  should  be  kept 
forever  against  all  the  assaults  of  traitors,  one 
in  polity,  in  spirit,  and  in  aim ! 

Gentlemen,  this  is  what  we  ought  to  do,  what 
we  should  try  to  do  ;  we  should  seize  by  our 
imagination  the  glory  of  our  country,  that  our 
patriotism  may  be  a  permanent  and  a  lofty  flame. 
Patriotism  is  an  imaginative  sentiment.  Imagi- 
nation is  essential  to  its  vigor ;  not  imagination 
which  distorts  facts,  but  which  sweeps  a  vast  field 
of  them  and  illumines  it.  It  comprehends  hills, 
streams,  plains,  and  valleys  in  a  broad  concep- 
tion, and  from  traditions  and  institutions,  from 
the  life  of  the  past  and  the  vigor  and  noble  ten- 
dencies of  the  present,  it  individualizes  the  des- 
tiny and  personifies  the  spirit  of  its  land,  and 
then  vows  its  vow  to  that. 

It  is  of  the  very  essence  of  true  patriotism, 
therefore,  to  be  earnest  and  truthful,  to  scorn  the 
flatterer's  tongue,  and  strive  to  keep  its  native 


4OO  The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism. 

land  in  harmony  with  the  laws  of  national  thrift 
and  power.  It  will  tell  a  land  of  its  faults,  as  a 
friend  will  counsel  a  companion.  It  will  speak 
as  honestly  as  the  physician  advises  a  patient. 
And  if  occasion  requires,  an  indignation  will 
flame  out  of  its  love  like  that  which  burst  from 
the  lips  of  Moses  when  he  returned  from  the 
mountain  and  found  the  people  to  whom  he  had 
revealed  the  austere  Jehovah,  and  for  whom  he 
would  cheerfully  have  sacrificed  his  life,  worship- 
ping a  calf. 

We  condense  all  the  intimations  of  these  last 
thoughts  in  saying  that  true  patriotism  is  pledged 
to  the  idea  which  one's  native  country  represents. 
It  does  not  accept  and  glory  in  its  country  merely 
for  what  it  is  at  present  and  has  been  in  the  past, 
but  for  what  it  may  be.  Each  nation  has  a  rep- 
resentative value.  Each  race  that  has  appro- 
priated a  certain  latitude  which  harmonizes  with 
its  blood  has  the  capacity  to  work  out  special 
good  results,  and  to  reveal  great  truths  in  some 
original  forms.  God  designs  that  each  country 
shall  bear  a  peculiar  ideal  physiognomy,  and  he 
has  set  its  geographical  characteristics  as  a  bony 
skeleton,  and  breathed  into  it  a  free  life  spirit, 
which,  if  loyal  to  the  intention,  will  keep  the 
blood  in  health,  infuse  vigor  into  every  limb,  give 
symmetry  to  the  form,  and  carry  the  flush  of  a  pure 
and  distinct  expression  to  the  countenance.  It 
is  the  patriot's  office  to  study  the  laws  of  public 
growth  and  energy,  and  to  strive  with  enthusiastic 


The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism.  40 1 

love  to  guard  against  every  disease  that  would 
cripple  the  frame,  that  he  may  prevent  the  lin- 
eaments of  vice  and  brutality  from  degrading 
the  face  which  God  would  have  radiant  with  truth, 
genius,  and  purity. 

He  was  the  best  patriot  of  ancient  Greece  who 
had  the  widest  and  wisest  conception  of  the  ca- 
pacities and  genius  of  Greece,  and  labored  to  paint 
that  ideal  winningly  before  the  national  mind,  and 
to  direct  the  flame  of  national  aspiration,  fanned 
by  heroic  memories,  up  to  the  noblest  possibilities 
of  Grecian  endeavor.  The  truest  patriot  of  Eng- 
land would  be  the  man  whose  mind  should  see 
in  the  English  genius  and  geography  what  that 
nation  could  do  naturally  and  best  for  humanity, 
and,  seizing  the  traditional  elements  that  are  in 
harmony  with  that  possibility,  should  use  them  to 
enliven  his  own  sympathies,  and  to  quicken  the 
nation's  energy.  We  might  say  the  same  of  Rus- 
sia and  of  Italy.  The  forward  look  is  essential 
to  patriotism. 

And  how  much  more  emphatically  and  impres- 
sively true  is  this  when  we  bring  our  own  country 
into  the  foreground  !  We  have  been  placed  on 
our  domain  for  the  sake  of  a  hope.  What  we 
have  done,  and  what  has  been  done  for  us,  is  only 
preparation,  the  outline-sketching  of  a  picture  to 
be  filled  with  color  and  life  in  the  next  three  cen- 
turies. Shall  the  sketch  be  blurred  and  the 
canvas  be  torn  in  two  ?  That  is  what  we  are  to 
decide  in  these  bitter  and  bloody  clays. 


4O2   The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism. 

Our  struggle  now  is  to  keep  the  country  from 
falling  away  from  the  idea  which  every  great  pa- 
triot has  recognized  as  the  purpose  towards  which 
our  history,  from  the  first,  has  been  moving.  God 
devised  the  scheme  for  us  of  one  republic.  He 
planted  the  further  slope  of  the  Alleghanies  at  first 
with  Saxon  men  ;  he  has  striped  the  Pacific  coast 
with  the  energy  of  their  descendants,  protecting 
thus  both  avenues  of  entrance  to  our  domain 
against  European  intrusion  j  but  the  great  wave 
of  population  he  has  rolled  across  the  Allegha- 
nies into  the  central  basin.  That  is  the  seat  of 
the  American  polity.  And  an  imperial  river  runs 
through  it  to  embarrass,  and  to  shame,  and  to 
balk  all  plans  of  rupture.  The  Mississippi  bed 
was  laid  by  the  Almighty  as  the  keel  of  the  Amer- 
ican ship,  and  the  channel  of  every  stream  that 
pours  into  it  is  one  of  its  ribs.  We  have  just 
covered  the  mighty  frame  with  planking,  and  have 
divided  the  hull  into  State  compartments.  And 
the  rebels  say,  "  Break  the  ship  in  two."  They 
scream,  "  We  have  a  right  to,  on  the  ground  of  the 
sovereignty  of  the  compartments,  and  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  Declaration  of  Independence ;  we 
have  a  right  to,  and  we  will !  "  The  loyal  heart 
of  the  nation  answers,  "We  will  knock  out  all 
your  Gulf  compartments  and  shiver  your  sovereign 
bulkheads,  built  of  ebony,  to  pieces,  and  leave  you 
one  empty  territory  again,  before  you  shall  break 
the  keel."  This  is  the  right  answer.  We  must 
do  it,  not  only  for  our  own  safety,  but  to  preserve 


The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism.  403 

the  idea  which  the  nation  has  been  called  to  fulfil, 
and  to  which  patriotism  is  called  and  bound  to 
be  loyal.  Ay,  even  if  there  were  one  paragraph 
or  line  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence  that 
breathed  or  hinted  a  sanction  of  the  rebellion  ! 
Geology  is  older  than  the  pen  of  Jefferson  ;  the 
continent  is  broader  than  the  Continental  Con- 
gress ;  and  they  must  go  to  the  foundations  to 
learn  their  statesmanship. 

The  Procrustes  bed  of  American  patriotism  is 
the  bed  of  the  Mississippi,  and  every  theory  of 
national  life  and  every  plan  for  the  future  must 
be  stretched  on  that ;  and  woe  to  its  wretched 
bones  and  sockets  if  it  naturally  reaches  but  half- 
way ! 

Providence  made  the  country,  too,  when  the 
immense  basin  should  be  filled  with  its  fitting 
millions,  to  show  the  world  the  beauty  and  econ- 
omy of  continental  peace.  It  is  a  destiny  rad- 
ically different  from  that  of  Europe,  with  its  four 
millions  of  armed  men,  that  has  been  indicated  for 
us.  By  the  interplay  of  widely  different  products 
into  one  prosperity  —  cotton  and  cattle,  tobacco 
and  corn,  metals  and  manufactures,  shipyards 
and  banking-rooms,  forests  and  fields,  —  and 
all  under  one  law,  and  all  enjoying  local  liberty,  — 
sufficient  centralization,  but  the  mildest  pressure 
on  the  subordinate  districts  and  the  personal  will 
—  Providence  designed  to  bless  us  with  immense 
prosperity,  to  develop  an  energy  unseen  before 
on  this  globe,  and  to  teach  the  nations  a  lesson 


404  The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism. 

which  would  draw  them  into  universal  fraternity 
and  peace. 

The  rebels  have  tried  to  frustrate  this  hope  and 
scheme.  Patriotism,  which  discerns  the  idea  to 
which  the  nation  is  thus  called,  arms  to  prevent 
its  defeat.  They  say  that  there  shall  not  be  such 
unified  prosperity  and  all-embracing  peace  for  the 
future  hundreds  of  millions  on  our  domain.  We 
say  that  there  shall.  And  we  arm  to  enforce  our 
vision. 

But  is  not  that  a  strange  way  to  establish  peace, 
by  fighting  on  such  a  scale  as  the  republic  now 
witnesses  ?  Is  it  not  a  novel  method  to  labor  for 
economy  of  administration  and  expense  in  gov- 
ernment by  a  war  which  will  fetter  the  nation  with 
such  a  debt  ?  We  answer,  the  rebellion  gave  the 
challenge,  and  now  victory  at  any  cost  is  the  only 
economy.  Carnage,  if  they  will  it,  is  the  only 
path  to  peace. 

"  For  our  own  good 

All  causes  shall  give  way  ;  we  are  in  blood 
Stept  in  so  far,  that,  should  we  wade  no  more, 
Returning  were  as  tedious  as  go  o'er." 

Yes,  if  we  return,  all  our  blood  and  treasure  are 
wasted.  The  peace  we  gain  by  victory  is  for  all 
the  future,  and  for  uncounted  millions.  The  debt 
we  incur  by  three  years'  fighting  will  be  noth- 
ing compared  with  the  new  energy  and  security 
aroused,  nothing  to  the  next  hundred  years.  And 
it  will  establish  the  idea  to  which  the  land  was 
dedicated. 

But  do  you  say  that  if  we  conquer  the  rebel- 


The  Privilege  arid  Duties  of  Patriotism.  40$ 

lious  area,  we  must  bold  it  in  subjection  by  a  stand- 
ing army  which  will  be  very  costly,  and  is  contrary 
to  the  American  idea  ?  Very  well,  if  we  do  not 
conquer,  if  the  rebels  gain  a  strong  and  arrogant 
independence,  we  must  keep  up  an  immense  stand- 
ing army.  It  would  cost  more  to  watch  them  than 
it  will  to  hold  them.  For  we  should  be  obliged 
in  watching  them  to  watch  Europe  too.  We  pre- 
fer to  pay  money  to  hold  rather  than  to  watch ; 
and  if  we  pay  our  money  I  suppose  we  can  take 
our  choice.  Patriotism  says,  and  says  it  in  the 
interest  of  peace  and  economy  and  final  frater- 
nity, "  Fight  and  conquer  even  at  the  risk  of 
holding  them  for  a  generation  under  the  yoke." 
Fight,  though,  on  such  a  scale,  that  there  will  be 
no  need  of  holding  them  ;  that  they  will  gladly 
submit  again  to  the  rule  which  makes  the  repub- 
lic one,  and  blesses  all  portions  with  protection 
and  with  bounty.  Fight  till  they  shall  know  that 
they  kick  against  fate  and  the  resistless  laws  of 
the  world  !  Patriotism  calls  on  the  Cabinet  and 
the  head  of  the  nation  and  the  generals  who  give 
tone  to  the  campaign  to  forget  the  customs  and 
interests  of  peace  till  we  shall  gain  it  by  the  sub- 
mission of  the  rebels  and  the  shredding  of  their 
last  banner  into  threads. 

The  stake  is  worth  this  style  of  fighting.  For 
it  is  the  peace  of  our  grandchildren,  the  inter- 
blended  prosperity  of  the  continent,  the  economy 
of  centuries,  the  abolition  of  standing  armies  for 
a  thousand  years,  the  indefinite  postponement  of 


406   The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism. 

war,  the  idea  of  America,  that  we  are  to  bend  up 
thus  "  each  corporal  agent "  to  secure.  Fight 
with  hose-pipes  and  lavender-water  if  you  want 
perpetual  hatred  and  indefinite  slaughter ;  fight 
with  sheets  of  schrapnel  and  red-hot  shot  if  you 
want  to  see  the  speedy  dawn  again  of  American 
peace  and  good-will! 

And  Providence,  still  further,  dedicated  this 
land  as  the  better  home  for  labor,  and  to  a  polity 
that  honors  and  blesses  labor.  Not  equal  rights, 
so  much  as  new  honor  to  the  workman,  is  the 
idea  which  our  polity  is  divinely  called  to  embla- 
zon and  to  guard.  For  this  and  to  help  this 
our  immense  fields  were  shrouded  in  darkness 
until  a  race  should  be  ready  who  would  bring  a 
free  ballot-box  with  them,  and  an  untitled  church, 
and  a  free  Bible,  and  the  seed  of  public  schools, 
and  a  spirit  that  should  shake  at  last  the  "  glit- 
tering generalities  "  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence into  literature,  like  dew-drops  in  the 
morning  from  a  tree.  Into  whatever  movement 
or  conceptions  the  doctrine  of  the  sacredness  of 
man  and  the  worth  of  labor  flows,  there  patriotism 
discerns  the  proper  march  of  the  tide  of  American 
thought  and  spirit.  Whatever  denies  and  cramps 
and  opposes,  that  is  hostile  to  the  call  and  des- 
tiny of  the  younger  continent.  For  whatever  in 
America  blasphemes  the  rights  of  labor  and  bars 
the  education  of  the  workman,  smites  the  soil  to 
that  extent  with  blight,  degrades  literature,  drains 
public  spirit,  chains  the  wheel  of  progress,  insults 


The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism.  407 

the  New  Testament,  and  flouts  the  nobler  tradi- 
tions of  the  land. 

I  need  not  tell  you  that  the  rebellion  is  guilty 
of  this  too.  It  sins  against  the  Mississippi ;  it 
sins  against  the  coast  line ;  it  sins  against  the 
ballot-box  j  it  sins  against  oaths  of  allegiance ;  it 
sins  against  public  and  beneficent  peace ;  and 
it  sins,  worse  than  all,  against  the  corner-stone  of 
American  progress  and  history  and  hope,  —  the 
worth  of  the  laborer,  the  rights  of  man.  It 
strikes  for  barbarism  against  civilization.  We 
have  taken  the  carbon  of  labor  from  Europe,  and 
tried  to  promote  it  into  the  diamond.  Under  the 
true  American  system  a  journeyman  machinist  in 
his  striped  shirt  becomes  General  Nathaniel  P. 
Banks.  The  rebel  idea  is  hostile  to  all  this 
crystallization.  Keep  all  labor  in  its  grimy  and 
carbon  state,  they  say;  and  so  they  choose  it 
and  perpetuate  it  of  a  color  that  will  fulfil  their 
arrogant  conception. 

Patriotism  calls  us  to  brace  our  sinews  against 
this  hideous  apostasy,  and  to  see  that  the  land  is 
not  severed  by  it.  Our  unity  gone,  our  economi- 
cal peace  broken  up,  standing  armies  imposed  on 
us  forever,  European  intrigue  and  antagonism  our 
law, — and  all  for  the  doctrine  that  labor  may 
rightfully  be  trodden  into  the  mire,  —  what  a 
close  of  the  book  of  our  national  story  !  What 
a  robbery  of  the  crown  from  our  once  proud 
forehead ! 

Gentlemen,  it  is  a  privilege  that  we  can  feel 


408   The  Privilege  and  Ditties  of  Patriotism. 

a  patriotism  which  sets  our  present  struggle  in 
such  relations,  and  coolly  sees  that  our  country 
has  been  dedicated  to  a  mission  and  a  service 
so  vast  and  eminent.  The  duties  correspond  to 
the  privilege.  One  great  duty  is  to  feel  the  privi- 
lege more  keenly,  and  by  the  inspiration  of  it 
stand  strong  for  the  country's  unity. 

Especially  against  any  intimation  from  foreign 
powers  of  intervention  to  stop  our  war  and  break 
our  integrity.  If  France  tries  it,  we  will  arm  as 
France  armed  against  the  intervention  of  Europe 
in  her  great  Revolution,  and  hurled  the  circling 
armies  back  !  If  England  tries  it,  we  will  say  to 
her  as  Macaulay  said,  with  admirable  vigor  and 
eloquence  in  the  House  of  Commons,  when  the 
secession  of  Ireland  was  threatened  :  "  The  Re- 
peal of  the  Union  we  regard  as  fatal  to  the 
empire,  and  we  never  will  consent  to  it ;  never, 
though  the  country  should  be  surrounded  by  dan- 
gers as  great  as  those  which  threatened  her  when 
her  American  Colonies,  and  France,  and  Spain, 
and  Holland  were  leagued  against  her,  and  when 
the  armed  neutrality  of  the  Baltic  disputed  her 
maritime  rights ;  never,  though  another  Bona- 
parte should  pitch  his  camp  in  sight  of  Dover 
Castle ;  never,  till  all  has  been  staked  and  lost ; 
never,  till  the  four  quarters  of  the  world  have 
been  convulsed  by  the  last  struggle  of  the  great 
English  people  for  their  place  among  the  nations." 
It  was  an  island,  utterly  disjoined  from  England, 
and  separated  more  widely  by  blood  and  belief 


The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism.  409 

than  by  the  chafing  sea,  of  whose  threatened 
secession  these  words  were  spoken  by  the  most 
widely  read  English  orator  of  this  generation. 
How  much  more  fitly  and  honorably  can  we  urge 
the  spirit  of  them  if  England  should  attempt  to 
break  our  hold  upon  integral  portions  of  our 
empire,  the  very  courses  of  our  rivers,  the  very 
land  for  which  we  have  paid  our  millions  and  our 
blood !  Let  the  spirit  sweep  through  our  loyal 
millions  which  Macaulay  thus  uttered;  let  us 
become  such  a  battery  that  fervor  and  determina- 
tion of  that  temperature  shall  leap  out  whenever 
the  thought  of  foreign  intervention  is  breathed. 
Then  Europe  will  be  careful  enough  how  she 
touches  the  awful  galvanic  pile.  Patriotism  of 
that  temper  will  be  a  peace-preserver. 

And  another  duty  of  patriotism  now  is  to  call 
for  the  declaration  of  a  new  policy  in  the  war. 

Many  of  you  have  heard  of  the  eloquent  sailor- 
preacher  of  Boston,  Father  Taylor.  No  man  is 
more  patriotic ;  no  man  is  more  powerful  in 
prayer.  A  few  weeks  ago  he  prayed  thus  for 
our  excellent  Chief  Magistrate  in  Boston  :  (those 
of  you  who  have  heard  him  will  conceive  with 
what  vitality  and  emphasis  he  shot  out  the  adjec- 
tives :)  "  O  Lord,  guide  our  dear  President,  our 
Abraham,  the  friend  of  God  like  old  Abraham ! 
Save  him  from  those  wriggling,  intriguing,  politic, 
piercing,  slimy,  boring  keel-worms  ;  don't  let  them 
go  through  the  sheathing  of  his  integrity ! "  Now 
we  ought  to  begin  to  beseech  Abraham,  and  to 
18 


4 1  o  The  Privilege  and  Ditties  of  Patriotism. 

pray  Heaven  in  his  behalf  and  ours,  that  the 
"  keel-worms "  shall  not,  through  his  delay  or 
scruples,  bore  through  the  sheathing  of  the  na- 
tion's integrity. 

The  time  has  come  when  we  must  look  more 
at  the  actual  Constitution  of  the  nation  than  at 
the  paper  constitution  through  which  the  rebel 
chiefs  have  struck  their  daggers.  The  time  has 
come  when  it  should  be  said  and  known  and  pro- 
claimed with  the  trumpet  of  the  President,  that 
we  strike  to  exterminate  the  power  of  the  slave- 
aristocracy  of  the  rebel  region. 

The  slave-oligarchy  of  the  rebel  States,  if  the 
war  is  to  end  in  our  favor,  must  be  shorn  of  all 
their  power  for  mischief.  Otherwise  the  war, 
though  we  conquer,  does  not  end  in  our  favor. 
By  the  necessity  of  their  position  they  stand  thus 
hostile.  Hostility  to  the  American  spirit  steams 
like  an  intellectual  malaria  from  their  plantations. 
They  breathe  it  invisibly  and  perforce.  They, 
are  enemies  by  fate  to  all  that  as  loyal  Americans 
we  honor,  and  all  that  we  are  fighting  to  save. 

In  the  now  rebellious  States  there  are  less  than 
three  hundred  thousand  of  them.  We  must  crush 
their  power.  Any  other  issue  to  the  war  is  simply 
chopping  off  the  rattles  from  the  snake  instead  of 
drawing  the  fangs.  And  to  crush  their  power,  we 
must  strike  the  fetters  from  their  bondmen.  And 
we  must  say  soon  that  our  purpose  is  nothing  less 
than  this,  that  we  shall  hold  on  until  we  accom- 
plish this. 


The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism.  41 1 

Some  would  do  this  as  a  crusade  in  favor  of 
the  freedom  of  the  black  race.  I  would  do  it  as 
a  wise  and  statesmanlike  blow  for  the  permanent 
interest  of  all  the  white  race  in  our  empire,  and 
to  insure  the  unity  and  peace  of  the  Continent 
for  centuries.  Thus  we  make  America  homoge- 
neous  Thus  we  give  the  war  a  principle. 

Thus  we  strike  at  the  root  of  our  differences,  our 
dangers,  our  sorrows,  and  our  mighty  wrong. 
The  rebel  aristocracy  have  staked  their  power 
upon  this  challenge.  If  they  fail  they  have  lost, 
and  we  must  see  that  they  both  fail  and  lose 

O  that  the  President  would  soon  speak  that 
electric  sentence, — inspiration  to  the  loyal  North, 
doom  to  the  traitorous  aristocracy  whose  cup  of 
guilt  is  full !  Let  him  say  that  it  is  a  war  of 
mass  against  class,  of  America  against  feudalism, 
of  the  schoolmaster  against  the  slave-master,  of 
workmen  against  the  barons,  of  the  ballot-box 
against  the  barracoon.  This  is  what  the  struggle 
means.  Proclaim  it  so,  and  what  a  light  breaks 
through  our  leaden  sky !  The  war-wave  rolls  then 
with  the  impetus  and  weight  of  an  idea. 

"  The  sword !  —  a  name  of  dread !  —  yet  when 
Upon  the  freeman's  thigh  't  is  bound,  — 
While  for  his  altar  and  his  hearth, 
While  for  the  land  that  gave  him  birth,      • 
The  war-drums  roll,  the  trumpets  sound,  — 
How  sacred  is  it  then ! 

"  Whenever  for  the  truth  and  right 
It  flashes  in  the  van  of  fight,  — 
Whether  in  some  wild  mountain  pass, 


4 1 2   The  Privilege  and  Duties  of  Patriotism. 

% 

As  that  where  fell  Leonidas ; 

Or  on  some  sterile  plain  and  stern,  — 

A  Marston  or  a  Bannockburn  ; 

Or  mid  fierce  crags  and  bursting  rills,  — 

The  Switzer's  Alps,  gray  Tyrol's  hills; 

Or,  as  when  sunk  the  Armada's  pride, 

It  gleams  al5bve  the  stormy  tide  ;  — 

Still,  still,  whene'er  the  battle's  word 

Is  Liberty,  —  when  men  do  stand 

For  Justice  and  their  native  land,  — 

Then  Heaven  bless  the  sword ! » 

Yes,    gentlemen,    then    Heaven    will   bless   the 
sword!  .... 

1862. 


XII. 


INTELLECTUAL    DUTIES    OF    STUDENTS    IN    THEIR 
ACADEMIC  YEARS.* 


I 


CONGRATULATE  you  all,  students,  officers 
of  this  college,  and  patrons  and  friends  of  it, 
upon  this  anniversary,  upon  the  excellence  of  the 
exercises  to  which  we  have  listened,  and  upon  the 
good  auspices  for  the  future. 

None  of  you,  young  men,  are  Alumni  yet.  The 
highest  class  here  has  one  year  more  of  academic 
opportunity  before  assuming  the  responsibility  of 
active  life,  or  turning  to  the  narrower  lines  of  an 
exclusive  professional  training.  Many  of  you  look 
forward  to  several  years  of  privilege  in  the  quiet 
absorption  of  preliminary  knowledge.  Years  of 
opportunity  and  privilege,  I  say.  Would  that  you 
might  account  them  as  precious  as  those  who  are 
engaged  in  the  wear  and  waste  of  professional  toil 
know  and  feel  that  they  are  ! 

The  preparatory  school  and  the  college  lay  the 
basis  of  the  power  and  the  satisfaction  with  which, 
in  after  years,  the  work  of  life  will  be  discharged. 
Young  men  do  not  go  to  college  to  complete  their 

*  An  address  before  the  students  of  Oakland  College,  California, 
June.  4,  1862. 


414      Intellectual  Duties  of  Students 

education,  but  to  draw  the  ground-plan  of  it,  and 
to  lay  the  under  courses  of  a  future  building  deep 
and  firm.  To  use  the  words  of  St.  Paul  in  a  secu- 
lar sense,  they  are  then  "laying  up  for  themselves 
a  good  foundation  against  the  time  to  come." 
And  the  years  are  profitably  used  just  to  the 
extent  that  habits  of  mental  industry  are  formed, 
loyalty  to  truth  confirmed,  and  the  principles 
which  underlie  and  support  knowledge  and  cul- 
ture are  laid  and  cemented  imperishably  by  the 
masonry  of  application. 

Nobody  can  become  wise,  in  the  best  college 
on  this  planet,  between  twelve  and  twenty.  But 
a  youth  of  capacious  powers  can  do  more  in  those 
years  towards  enlarging  the  resources  and  enno- 
bling the  proportions  of  his  mental  character  and 
influence,  than  in  4fcy  twice  eight  years  after  he 
shall  have  taken  up  the  tasks  of  life.  It  is  no 
time  to  look  to  the  lower  tiers  of  the  edifice  after 
the  rafters  are  up  and  the  roof  is  on.  It  is  no 
time  to  be  attending  to  a  crack  in  the  basement, 
or  a  leaning  wall,  after  the  builder  has  moved 
into  the  house  with  his  family.  The  best  he  can 
do  is  to  move  out  of  it  and  buy  another,  or  spend 
largely  to  have  it  put  in  friendship  with  math- 
ematics and  gravitation.  But  a  student  cannot 
remove  from  his  mental  house,  in  his  busy  years, 
although  he  may  see  that  the  ground-tier  of  stone 
is  not  based  right,  and  that  the  walls  are  not 
thick  enough  for  the  weight  they  must  bear. 

And   then    the   misery   that   comes !      To  be 


in  their  Academic   Years.  415 

obliged  to  apply  principles  and  not  to  be  sure 
of  them !  To  feel  the  need  of  fundamental  in- 
struction, which  might  once  have  been  thoroughly 
acquired,  while  the  mind  must  act,  and  in  respon- 
sible callings  too,  as  though  it  felt  secure !  To  be 
under  the  necessity  of  being  student  and  worker, 
journeyman  and  artist,  in  the  same  hour,  without 
the  satisfactions  that  belong  to  either  branch  of 
toil,  and  with  the  burden  of  practical,  and  perhaps 
very  important  duty  upon  the  hands  and  con- 
science,—  this  is  a  species  of  refined  and  exquisite 
agony  which  many  a  professional  man  in  our  day 
experiences,  and  which  is  the  penalty  either  of  an 
enforced  adoption  of  the  duties  of  a  profession 
without  ample  preparation,  or  of  wasted  academic 
hours. 

Do  not  be  so  eager,  young  men,  to  advance  in 
knowledge,  as  to  become  masters  of  elementary 
knowledge,  so  that  it  can  never  slip  from  your 
grasp,  but  becomes  incorporated  with  your  mental 
substance.  There  is  no  intellectual  wretchedness 
more  keen,  as  I  have  said,  than  conscious  inade- 
quacy of  the  mental  furniture  to  the  mental  duties, 
especially  in  the  grasp  of  primal  truths.  And 
there  is  no  intellectual  pleasure  more  sweet  than 
the  assurance,  tested  in  arduous  labor,  of  being 
grounded  in  truth,  of  finding  that  you  have  built 
your  house  upon  a  rock,  —  than  the  repose  that 
comes  when  you  know  something  positively  and 
know  that  you  know  it,  and  feel  the  mastery  of  a 
practical  field  because  of  that  consciousness. 


41 6       Intellectual  Duties  of  Students 

This  pain  or  reward  a  student  in  the  seclusion 
of  college  may  store  up  for  himself.  If  he  is  to  be 
called  to  any  prominent  professional  position,  he 
is  laying  it  up  by  his  sloth  or  his  diligence.  Be 
more  careful  for  elements  and  principles  than  for 
results,  for  the  multum  than  the  rnulta.  Think 
less  of  harvests  than  of  the  supply  and  temper 
of  reaping-instruments  and  the  knowledge  of  the 
composition  of  the  soil.  In  English  composition 
do  not  try  to  write  something  as  imaginative  as 
Burke  or  as  sinewy  as  Webster,  —  ten  chances  to 
one  you  will  not  succeed  in  the  attempt, — but 
study  as  thoroughly  as  you  can  the  structure  and 
forces  of  the  English  tongue,  the  powers  of  words, 
their  shades  of  distinction,  their  relative  purity 
and  excellence  in  the  immense  scale  of  our  com- 
posite and  wonderful  language.  This  is  the  proper 
employment  of  the  years  of  training.  If  you  are 
ever  to  rival  Burke  or  Ruskin,  Macaulay  or  Web- 
ster, it  will  be  by  dissolving  and  digesting  the 
English  dictionary  as  they  did.  And  if  you  should 
never  rival  either  of  them,  you  will  fit  yourself  to 
express  your  thought,  whatever  its  grade  may  be, 
in  a  pure  and  scholarly  way,  and  you  will  not  be 
obliged  to  begin  to  learn  the  principles  of  language 
when  you  need  to  use  it. 

In  mathematics,  do  not  be  afraid  of  learning 
Euclid  too  thoroughly,  or  of  wielding  too  easily 
the  formulae  that  lead  towards  the  adytum  of  the 
Calculus.  In  chemistry,  or  botany,  or  geology, 
or  physiology,  keep  your  eye  on  the  ground-plan 


in  their  Academic   Years.  417 

of  each  science,  and  care  for  the  outline  more  than 
the  filling  up.  You  can  fill  up  easily  in  odd  hours 
in  after  years,  if  you  are  not  to  pursue  science  as 
a  devotee  ;  but  no  odd  hours  will  clear  up  for 
you  the  basis  and  scope  of  each  science  as  you 
can  master  it  in  college.  And  if  you  are  never 
to  study  geology  minutely,  let  me  beseech  you  to 
learn  enough  of  it  to  prevent  you  from  saying 
"  a  strata,"  which  is  so  common  a  mistake,  even 
among  intelligent  people  in  our  State.  We  can- 
not make  the  article  "  a "  plural  even  by  the  ut- 
most exaggeration  which  is  sometimes  attributed 
to  all  Californians  in  their  dealing  with  truth ;  we 
cannot  make  strata  singular  unless  we  fuse  the 
crust  of  the  earth  into  "  conglomerate  "  in  a  most 
ungeological  way.  And  therefore  we  had  better 
refrain  from  the  combination,  unless  we  are  will- 
ing to  speak  of  "  an  oxen  "  or  "  a  teeth." 

In  the  study  of  history,  too,  the  most  practical 
use  of  the  academic  years  is  to  become  acquainted 
with  the  skeleton  facts  and  the  great  articulations 
of  national  experience,  and  to  master  them  thor- 
oughly, rather  than  to  seek  wide  information  by 
reading  on  a  narrower  scale.  The  first  is  basis- 
knowledge,  which  must  be  gained  by  drilling  the 
memory  when  the  mind  is  undistracted  by  practi- 
cal cares ;  and  when  it  is  gained,  all  after  reading 
readily  takes  its  place  as  part  of  a  rich  organism 
of  truths. 

Let  me  apply  the  same  principle  to  the  classic 
languages.  In  American  colleges,  as  in  the  Euro- 
18* 


41 8       Intellectual  Duties  of  Students 

pean  system,  the  study  of  classic  literature  takes 
the  most  honored  rank  in  the  scheme  of  scholarly 
training.  Yet  how  many  graduated  students,  in 
proportion  to  the  whole  number,  could  read,  ten 
years  after  leaving  college,  a  page  of  yEschylus 
easily,  an  ode  of  Catullus,  or  a  satire  of  Horace? 
It  may  be  of  very  little  consequence  to  a  man 
in  the  press  of  American  life  that  he  can  meet 
such  a  test,  but  his  failure  throws  an  unpleasant 
light  back  upon  the  economy  of  his  time  in  the 
years  of  training.  If  it  is  worth  while  to  spend 
so  much  time  on  Latin  and  Greek  between  ten 
and  twenty,  it  is  worth  while  to  spend  it  in  such 
a  way  that  the  results  cannot  be  wiped  out  by  the 
ten  years  of  active  life  next  succeeding  the  college 
commencement.  The  true  scholarly  object  is  not 
to  read  a  few  pages  more  of  this  classic  author  or 
that,  in  the  junior  and  senior  years,  but  to  con- 
quer the  Latin  and  Greek  tongues  by  exploring 
the  nooks  in  which  difficulties  hide,  by  mastery 
of  exceptions,  by  exercise  in  synonymes,  by  faith- 
ful study  of  measure,  by  appreciation  of  niceties 
of  construction  and  phrase.  It  lies  with  students 
to  do  this,  by  their  persistent  devotion  to  the 
groundwork  of  these  noble  languages  in  their 
groundwork  years.  They  can  lay  in  the  sub- 
structure of  memory  the  grammar  of  the  classic 
tongues  and  enough  of  their  vocabulary  by  the 
time  of  leaving  college,  if  they  study  wisely  and 
with  systemized  will,  so  that  they  shall  never  lose 
the  power  of  receiving  delight  from  the  elegant 


in  their  Academic    Years.  419 

majesty  of  Virgil,  or  of  being  lifted  up  with  con- 
scious joy  on  the  ground-swell  of  Cicero's  philo- 
sophic eloquence,  or  of  feeling  upon  any  page  of 
his  printed  triumphs  the  momentum  and  force 
of  the  furious  logic  of  Demosthenes.  I  should 
not  care  to  live  over  again  the  last  twenty  years 
of  my  life ;  but  I  should  consider  it  an  unspeaka- 
ble boon  to  be  able,  with  my  present  conviction 
of  their  importance,  to  re-live  the  season  of  train- 
ing between  ten  and  seventeen.  I  am  sure  that 
by  using  to  the  full  the  opportunities  of  that  period 
I  could  easily  have  doubled  the  productiveness, 
worth,  and  intellectual  satisfaction  of  the  twenty 
years  of  active  life  that  have  been  allotted  to  me. 

Do  not  fail,  then,  young  men,  to  use  carefully 
the  months,  the  days,  the  hours,  in  which  as  yet 
you  are  secluded  from  all  cares  but  those  of  til- 
lage. Do  not  be  in  a  hurry  to  reach  responsi- 
bility. Strive  to  be  furnished  for  it.  And  in 
every  line  of  inquiry  that  you  open,  be  eager  for 
the  facts  that  belong  to  the  substructure,  rather 
than  for  those  that  belong  to  the  finish  of  culture. 
The  deeper  you  go  now  into  principles,  the  higher 
you  will  rise  in  results  in  the  years  to  come,  when 
the  bulk  of  your  powers  must  be  pledged  to  work, 
and  only  the  uncertain  leisure  can  be  devoted  to 
further  acquisition. 

Another  point  of  which  I  would  speak,  and  in 
the  light  of  which  the  college  years  are  critical, 
is  the  choice  of  occupation.  For  ordinary  labor 
there  is  a  law  of  demand  and  supply  which  the 


420       Intellectual  Duties  of  Students 

political  economists  interpret  to  us.  The  coarser 
necessities  of  a  community  determine  how,  during 
a  period  of  five  years,  the  laboring  force  of  a  state 
shall  be  distributed  into  bridge-builders,  miners, 
carpenters,  blacksmiths,  masons ;  and  without 
much  trouble  the  general  force  can  be  turned 
over  from  one  department  to  another.  But  in 
the  higher  or  finer  domains  of  industry  the  ten- 
dency of  the  individual  is  to  be  consulted.  The 
destiny  is  seated  within,  not  without.  In  the 
selection  of  your  life-work  follow  your  bent. 

How  wonderful  and  how  beautiful  is  the  secret 
working  of  Providence  by  which  intelligent  power  is 
diversified  into  ten  thousand  varieties  and  special- 
ties, — men  of  equal  intellectual  energy  and  altitude 
being  so  marked  for  different  lines  and  services 
that  they  are  infants  if  taken  out  of  their  track 
and  fastened  to  another  style  of  task !  The  laws 
of  society  are  wiser  than  the  wisest  laws  that  can 
issue  from  human  reflection.  The  struggle  of  the 
race  is  to  throw  off  the  hampers  of  human  igno- 
rance and  quackery,  that  the  inwrought  forces  of 
society  may  have  free  play.  Then  we  get  order, 
symmetry,  freedom.  In  the  development  of  civili- 
zation there  would  be  an  immense  stride  towards 
happiness,  and  the  establishment  of  public  sanity, 
if  everybody  could  follow  the  bent  of  his  nature, 
except  the  bent  for  wickedness,  which,  in  an  Or- 
thodox Church  and  in  this  presence,  I  am  not 
going  to  say  is  weak.  If  from  birth  the  leanings 
of  the  nature  could  be  known,  and  education 


in  their  Academic   Years.  421 

could  be  applied  to  it,  so  that  at  manhood  and 
womanhood  each  soul  could  find  itself  in  its  own 
place,  the  Fourier  dream  of  attractive  industry 
would  not  be  so  wild,  the  millennium  would  receive 
a  push  hitherward,  and  Dr.  Gumming  might  fix 
his  dates  with  less  fear  of  the  elasticity  of  pro- 
phetic arithmetic. 

Students  ought  to  revere  this  stirring  of  Provi- 
dence within,  and  recognize  the  peculiar  talent 
as  the  call.  Inclinations  are  to  be  searched  and 
scrutinized  and  weighed,  perhaps  utterly  disre- 
garded. Aptitudes  are  to  be  respected  and 
obeyed.  If  you  are  by  direction  a  mathematician, 
find  a  calling  where  your  prime  mental  faculty 
will  be  called  prominently  into  play.  If  you  are 
an  artist,  not  by  desire  simply  to  handle  a  brush, 
but  by  competence  and  by  the  chronic  passion  to 
express  thought  in  form  and  color,  do  not  be 
forced  into  law  or  medicine.  Break  your  way  by 
obstinate  denials  and  sacrifices  through  the  thorn- 
iest social  chapparal,  although  it  take  you  years 
to  do  it,  that  you  may  get  into  the  path  where 
your  instincts  will  be  like  the  wings  of  Mercury  to 
your  feet. 

What  losses  of  force,  what  raggedness  of  ser- 
vice, what  wretchedness  of  heart,  have  resulted 
from  maladjustment  of  powers  to  stations,  — 
blacksmiths  in  pulpits,  preachers  in  counting- 
rooms,  artists  in  the  rough  holding  trowels,  arti- 
sans disguised  as  architects,  admirable  subjects 
for  the  Inebriate  Home  wearing  shoulder-straps 


422       Intellectual  Duties  of  Students 

and  stars,  thieves  spelling  their  titles  in  three 
syllables,  "  Contractors,"  and  traders  appearing 
as  politicians,  till  statesmanship  means,  "  How 
will  you  swop  ?  " 

Think  what  a  change  in  the  fortunes  of  the 
race  if  Columbus  had  not  been  able  to  get  aboard 
his  sloop  ;  if  Bacon  had  been  kept  in  politics  so 
exclusively  that  he  had  not  written  the  "  Novum 
Organum  "  ;  if  Newton  had  not  happened  to  hear 
of  a  new  measurement  of  the  earth's  radius,  and 
of  a  degree  of  latitude,  which  was  the  occasion  of 
the  final  demonstration  of  the  force  and  law  of 
gravity ;  if  Milton  had  not  found  his  fit  setting 
in  English  history;  if  Watt  had  been  placed  in 
circumstances  that  would  have  quenched  his  in- 
tellectual enthusiasm.  Artemus  Ward  tells  us 
that  Shakespeare  would  have  been  entirely  unfit 
to  be  a  reporter  of  a  New  York  newspaper,  be- 
cause he  had  not  imagination  and  fancy  enough. 
How  fortunate,  therefore,  that  he  was  drawn  to 
and  held  in  a  sphere  where  his  more  limited  sup- 
ply attracted  the  attention  of  the  world  ! 

Every  student  is  bound  to  honor  the  law  that 
the  talent  is  the  divine  commission,  and  then  to 
fit  his  own  talent  to  the  field  he  enters,  so  that  he 
shall  extend  the  bounds  of  light  in  his  depart- 
ment. Subdivision  is  the  condition  of  intellectual 
eminence  and  solid  reputation,  and  of  the  advance 
of  science.  If  you  go  into  law,  or  medicine,  or 
theology,  or  any  avenue  of  physical  research,  or 
become  a  student  in  literature,  select,  besides  the 


in  their  Academic   Years.  423 

general  practical  duties  of  your  calling,  one  narrow 
district  or  vein  of  the  great  treasury  of  truth  in 
your  department,  and  work  in  that  till  you  master 
all  that  has  been  done  in  it,  and  then  try  to  push 
the  line  of  darkness  a  little  further  out. 

Every  intellect  is  forced  now  to  be  a  parasite 
of  some  branch,  leaf,  organ  of  the  mighty  struc- 
ture of  universal  truth.  Concentrate  power  upon 
one  line  of  your  profession,  one  narrow  line,  and 
you  shall  win  mental  satisfaction  to  fill  a  portion 
of  every  day  with  sweetness,  and  shall  find  your 
study  advancing  you  to  a  clear  and  powerful 
knowledge  of  the  whole  domain  into  whose  larger 
paths  your  chosen  and  tiny  district  opens  by  mod- 
est and  delightful  aisles. 

Another  duty  of  students  in  their  preparatory 
years  is  to  form  the  habit  of  intellectual  respect 
and  hospitality. 

The  world  of  truth  is  immense,  the  mind  of 
man  is  fragmentary,  and  the  heart  of  man  is  nar- 
row. When  we  get  harnessed  into  the  toils  and 
conflicting  interests  of  practical  life,  truth  does 
not  have  a  fair  chance  at  our  hands.  We  have 
taken  sides.  We  are  soon  organized  by  friend- 
ships and  by  customs  into  the  partial  antagonism 
of  movements,  schools,  and  creeds.  We  cannot 
devote  ourselves  to  the  culture  of  broad  sympa- 
thies, but  must  act  where  the  very  channels  of 
action,  the  only  channels  through  which  we  can 
do  efficient  service,  are  barriers  of  division,  and 
tend  to  alienate  sympathies,  and  to  narrow  the 
mental  vision. 


424       Intellectual  Duties  of  Students 

A  man  who  has  been  devoted  for  years  to  one 
theory  in  a  science,  and  whose  fame  and  inter- 
ests are  involved  in  its  security,  is  not  in  the  free 
condition  to  give  the  kind  of  welcome  to  a  rival 
hypothesis  which  it  has  a  right  to  claim.  All  it 
asks  is  severe,  unprejudiced  logic.  But  the  logic 
which  will  be  applied  by  the'  famous  representa- 
tive of  a  theory  that  will  be  displaced  by  it,  can 
hardly  be  unprejudiced,  however  sure  it  may  be 
to  prove  sufficiently  severe.  .The  homoeopath 
and  allopath  will  hardly  do  justice  to  each  other's 
philosophy  of  medicine  when  each  is  winning 
patients  from  the  other  in  the  fluctuations  of  a 
city  experience.  It  is  only  clergymen  who  are 
always  clear  of  partisanship,  and  able  to  look 
at  competing  doctrines  through  an  achromatic 
lens! 

Providence  made  us  to  be  workers ;  made  us  to 
choose  sides,  and  forbids  us  to  be  perpetual  in- 
quirers, always  pampering  an  intellectual  charity 
which  restrains  us  from  saying  things  positive,  and 
from  striking,  now  and  then,  hard  blows.  Still, 
mental  tolerance  is  one  of  the  chief  graces  and 
glories  of  character,  and  the  time  to  lay  the  sub- 
structure of  it  is  in  the  studious  years,  before  we 
become  pledged  to  the  duties  and  interests  that 
exercise  the  will,  and  indispose  the  mind  to  turn- 
ing new  pages  in  the  book  of  truth.  Youth  is  the 
time  for  wide  views,  and  to  fix  the  habit  of  intel- 
lectual respect  founded  on  the  knowledge  of  the 
breadth  of  the  field  of  truth  and  speculation. 


in  their  Academic   Years.  425 

In  our  unfettered  studious  years  we  see  that,  in 
spite  of  all  that  Plato  taught  and  wrote,  Aristotle 
had  an  immense  deal  to  say  for  himself,  that 
stoicism  kept  rising  from  repeated  rebuffs,  that 
materialism  and  idealism  renew  in  every  age  their 
desperate  contests  through  consummate  athletes, 
and  that  the  shores  of  history  are  littered  with  the 
wrecks  of  systems  which  once  pretended  to  ac- 
count for  nature,  and  claimed  to  be  able  to  rule 
human  thought  forever.  The  student  should  not 
learn  from  this  that  he  must  not  be  a  party  man. 
He  must  be.  He  will  never  be  able  to  settle  and 
harmonize  what  millions  of  minds  and  a  score  of 
centuries  have  not  reduced  to  consistent  sym- 
metry. But  he  must  learn  not  to  be  a  partisan, 
and  to  keep  clean  of  the  infection  of  intellectual 
contempt  towards  thinkers  and  systems  that  have 
a  long  lineage. 

God  has  diversified  the  world  of  souls  into 
various  classes  of  temperament ;  he  has  made 
no  mind  competent  to  manage  and  harmonize 
the  profoundest  mysteries  of  moral  and  spiritual 
life  ;  and  he  has  disposed  certain  classes  of  souls 
by  their  temperament  to  turn  in  certain  directions 
of  the  spiritual  universe  for  their  nutriment,  that 
many  groups  may  illustrate  by  their  character  the 
riches  of  the  mighty  realm. 

Conservatives  have  a  right  to  exist,  as  the  bark 
and  trunk  of  an  oak  have  no  apology  to  offer 
for  themselves.  The  tree  needs  muscle  and 
weight.  Advance  thinkers  have  a  call  to  exist, 


426       Intellectual  Duties  of  Students 

for  the  tree  needs  leaves  and  expansion.  Gravi- 
tation and  opposition  to  gravitation  are  equal 
requisites  of  tree-truth.  Let  the  fibres  settle  the 
philosophy  of  the  business  and  its  contradiction 
among  themselves,  if  they  can.  They  are  called 
to  choose  sides,  but  they  will  be  wise  if  they 
recognize  the  mystery  in  their  organism,  and 
work  with  a  feeling  of  common  wonder  and 
mutual  toleration. 

Take  a  High  Churchman,  an  earnest  Metho- 
dist, a  devoted  Quaker,  and  excite  the  religious 
sentiment  in  them  to  fervor.  The  Churchman 
drops  on  his  knees  before  the  printed  prayer  of 
St.  Chrysostom ;  the  Methodist  will  ache  if  he 
cannot  cry  out,  not  from  Chrysostom,  but  from  the 
sacred  tumult  in  his  private  breast ;  the  Quaker 
is  quiet  as  the  mountain  lake  at  midnight  reflect- 
ing the  calm  of  the  quivering  stars.  Are  their 
intellects  made  to  agree,  when  their  souls  are 
thus  formed  to  take  different  hues,  and  live  in 
different  airs  of  sentiment  ?  No  religious  philos- 
ophy is  ample  that  does  not  justify  the  ritualism, 
the  hallelujah,  and  the  silence.  Nobody  was 
made  to  live  on  error,  but  living  on  a  part  of  the 
truth  is  not  living  on  error,  any  more  than  the 
persistent  redness  of  the  rose  and  the  chronic 
whiteness  of  the  lily  prove  that  one  or  the  other 
of  them  rejects  the  sun.  Apostolical  succession  ! 
Yes,  but  there  were  twelve  Apostles  with  differ- 
ent types  of  grace  expressed  in  their  spiritual 
organization  \  and  then  Paul  comes  in  to  make 


in  their  Academic   Years.  427 

a  generous  dozen  ;  and  each  church  can  have  an 
apostolical  succession  of  its  own. 

We  hear  of  the  five  points  of  Calvinism.  Do 
not  fear  that  I  am  going  to  attack  them,  under 
the  delusion  that  it  is  Sunday  and  that  I  am  in 
my  own  church.  If  I  were  there  I  should  not. 
Brethren,  you  claim  too  little.  I  believe  that 
Calvinism  has  more  than  five  points.  It  has  as 
many  as  one  hundred  and  eighty ;  that  is  the 
number  of  degrees  in  half  a  circle,  is  n't  it  ?  And 
I  believe  that  its  philosophic  roots  run  down  to 
the  foundations  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  truth. 
But  truth,  like  the  earth,  is  a  globe ;  and  the  foun- 
dation is  the  centre ;  and  Arminius  has  another 
one  hundred  and  eighty  degrees  and  he  comes 
down  to  the  centre  too ;  and  Swedenborg  gets 
there  also ;  and  I  have  a  suspicion  that  Channing 
once  sank  his  shaft  as  far.  A  score  of  sects  on 
some  lines  get  down  to  the  centre,  and  there  is 
room  enough  there  for  all  the  shafts,  and  power 
enough  there  to  hold  all  the  systems  firm. 

Dr.  Bushnell,  a  name  to  be  mentioned  nowhere 
but  with  the  heartiest  respect,  and  with  peculiar 
reverence  and  affection  before  this  college,  once 
said  that  he  could  sign  as  many  creeds  as  might 
be  offered  to  him,  since  words  are  so  elastic  and 
truth  so  comprehensive.  Let  us  thank  Heaven 
for  the  Doctor  and  the  vigor  of  his  mental  diges- 
tion, and  be  stimulated  by  his  words  to  a  nobler 
temper  than  contemptuous  dogmatism.  And  as 
students^  in  the  years  of  inquiry,  before  the  feet 


428       Intellectual  Duties  of  Students 

are  fettered  and  the  hands  tethered  to  practical 
responsibilities  and  vows,  let  us  bow  before  the 
vastness  and  mystery  of  the  world  and  "  the  Word," 
and  prepare  to  enter  diverging  paths  of  confession 
and  service,  with  joy  in  the  breadth  of  the  wis- 
dom which  can  use  such  variety  of  temperament, 
and  view,  and  organization  in  the  illustration  of 
its  composite  and  blinding  light.  Students  are 
called  to  the  duty  of  so  surveying  the  expanse 
of  the  domain  of  truth,  that  all  diversity,  where 
the  foundations  of  morals  are  not  touched,  shall 
be  genial  in  temper,  and  all  discussion  between 
permanent  classes  of  belief  dignified,  candid, 
catholic,  and  calm. 

And  now  I  cannot  refrain,  young  men,  from 
referring  to  another  duty  of  American  scholars, 
in  their  studious  years,  namely,  to  fill  their  hearts 
with  patriotism  by  feeding  their  minds  from  the 
wonderful  annals  of  their  country's  history. 

Whatever  path  a  young  man  chooses  in  the 
intellectual  world,  whatever  severity  of  study  he 
may  impose  upon  himself  in  the  ambition  to 
master  it,  two  volumes  must  always  be  pouring 
their  influence  into  his  nature,  the  New  Testa- 
ment and  the  volume  of  records  of  his  native 
land.  Religion  and  patriotism  must  stream  into 
every  fibre  of  his  brain,  into  every  duct  of  his 
blood. 

There  is  no  danger  now  that  the  sentiment  of 
patriotism  will  fail  in  the  masses  of  the  American 
people.  How  suddenly  in  the  hour  of ,  need  it 


in  their  Academic   Years.  429 

arose !  How  it  swelled  from  unsuspected  foun- 
tains !  The  wisest  statesman,  the  most  sagacious 
politician,  did  not  predict  or  suspect  the  possibility 
of  such  a  surge.  It  came  with  a  Bay  of  Fundy 
sweep  and  speed !  Nay,  more  marvellous  than  that. 
It  was  akin  rather  to  an  earthquake  wave  we  read 
of  sometimes  in  a  tropic  country.  Just  at  the 
outbreak  of  treason  there  was,  you  know,  a  strange 
stillness  in  the  air,  heavy  and  oppressive.  The 
sea  was  listless.  The  beaches  were  bare.  It 
seemed  as  though  mammon-worship  had  paralyzed 
manhood.  And  then  the  volcanic  moment  came, 
the  rumble,  the  roar,  the  upheaval  of  the  very 
bed  of  the  sea  under  the  flame  of  the  country's 
maddened  heart.  And  the  billow  rose  —  the 
moral  billow  —  along  the  line  of  a  continent ;  and 
it  rolled  from  that  calm  ocean  dark,  massive,  sub- 
lime, till  its  edge  whitened  with  sacred  wrath, 
and  the  track  of  its  tremendous  dash  is  marked 
by  the  broken  forts,  the  flying  hosts,  the  sub- 
merged banners,  of  the  rebellion.  Disloyalty  to 
the  imperial  republic  will  never  care  to  tempt 
again  the  anger  of  that  sleeping  deep. 

You  know  the  prophecies  of  a  little  more  than 
a  year  ago,  the  prophecies  of  foreign  critics,  and 
of  their  emissaries  here,  that  the  national  life  was 
dying.  Our  imperial  bird  was  spiritless,  they  said, 
and  mortally  sick.  They  did  not  see  how  Mil- 
ton's wonderful  passage  had  been  waiting  till  now 
for  fulfilment :  "  Methinks  I  see  in  my  mind  a 
noble  and  puissant  nation  rousing  herself,  like 


43O       Intellectual  Duties  of  Students 

a  strong  man  after  sleep,  and  shaking  her  invin- 
cible locks ;  methinks  I  see  her  as  an  eagle 
mewing  her  mighty  youth,  and  kindling  her  un- 
dazzled  eyes  at  the  full  midday  beam  ;  purging 
and  unsealing  her  long-abused  sight  at  the  fount 
itself  of  heavenly  radiance  ;  whilst  the  whole  noise 
of  timorous  and  flocking  birds,  with  those  also 
that  love  the  twilight,  flutter  about  amazed  at 
what  she  means,  and  in  their  envious  gabble 
would  prognosticate  a  year  of  sects  and  schisms." 
It  has  been  no  year  of  schism,  but  such  an  affir- 
mation of  national  unity  as  will  banish  all  future 
dreams  of  conspiracy. 

The  heart  of  the  nation  is  sound  in  patriotism. 
But  the  time  will  soon  pass  when  it  will  be  stimu- 
lated by  public  peril,  and  will  be  expressed  through 
powder,  steel,  and  a  gorgeous  wilderness  of  ban- 
ners. The  scholars  of  the  country  must  sustain 
and  chasten  and  direct  it.  We  must  not  fall  back 
from  our  attainment.  The  academies,  the  col- 
leges, the  churches,  must  secrete  the  passion  for 
our  country's  honor  and  mission,  and  be  ready 
to  pour  inspiration  at  needed  moments  into  the 
popular  soul. 

Let  the.  students  turn  now  with  new  zeal  and 
reverence  to  the  pages  of  our  national  past,  and  fit 
themselves  to  be  intelligent  centres  of  patriotic 
fervor,  guides  and  purifiers  of  the  national  pas- 
sion. Let  them  learn  more  of  the  training  of  this 
people  in  the  last  two  centuries,  the  preparations 
for  the  present  instinct  of  unity  and  the  sponta- 


in  their  Academic   Years.  431 

neously  compacted  patriotism  to  preserve  it.  Let 
them  arm  themselves  with  the  story  of  American 
growth  and  the  mysterious  aids  to  it,  and  be 
equipped  with  knowledge  to  guide  and  interpret, 
as  with  sentiment  to  echo,  the  devotion  of  our 
loyal  millions  to  their  intrusted  land. 

If  there  had  been  a  deeper  study  of  the  history 
of  America  in  the  last  twenty  years  in  the  rebel- 
lious districts,  and  a  baptism  in  the  spirit  which 
that  study  liberates,  this  war  could  not  have  been. 
But  rebel  memories  do  not  run  back  farther  than 
the  vice-presidency  of  Calhoun.  Before  him,  to 
their  vision,  America  was  a  blank,  —  or  if  any- 
thing existed  worth  recalling,  it  was  the  Resolu- 
tions of  1798. 

See  what  a  difference  in  the  motives  and  appeals 
that  incite  and  animate  the  hostile  sections  !  On 
one  side,  self-will.  No  appeal  to  a  principle,  no 
cry  that  a  great  truth  is  in  danger,  no  rally  around 
a  noble  charter,  no  invocation  of  the  memories 
and  service  and  advice  of  canonized  fathers,  no 
geographical  unity  to  guard,  no  invasion  to  avert, 
no  guaranteed  rights  trampled  or  wrested  away,  but 
a  schism  entailing  infinite  mischief  determined, 
completed,  and  justified  by  pure  hatred  and  self- 
will.  On  the  other  side,  history  appealed  to, 
memories  of  a  noble  past  recalled,  a  majestic 
charter,  never  broken,  put  forward,  the  labors, 
hopes,  and  prayers  of  great  men  from  all  sections 
adjured,  common  battles  and  triumphs  rekindled, 
a  majestic  and  symmetrical  geography  to  guard, 


432       Intellectual  Duties  of  Students 

a  great  commission  acknowledged  and  accepted, 
the  sentiment  of  freedom  chanted  in  stirring 
rhythms,  and  a  cause  whose  success  gives  the 
same  blessing  to  vanquished  as  to  victors ! 

Drink  of  the  fountains,  young  men,  that  are 
pouring  such  power  and  nobility  into  the  nation's 
heart  to-day.  Make  the  history  of  your  land  part 
of  your  mental  substance.  Resolve  that  every 
year  shall  introduce  you  to  some  new  department 
or  treasure  of  it.  Fill  up  by  some  regular  reading, 
if  it  is  only  a  chapter  a  week,  the  outline  story  of 
the  early  colonization,  the  dotting  of  the  surface 
with  various  nuclei  of  Saxon  energy,  the  early 
passion  for  self-government,  the  sweeping  away 
of  the  French  competition,  the  Revolution,  the 
controversies  about  the  Mississippi,  the  wretched- 
ness and  dissolution  of  the  early  confederation, 
the  rise  of  the  Constitution,  the  gathering  of  the 
breadth  of  the  continent  under  its  aegis  and  ban- 
ner, and  the  march  of  the  nation,  by  strides  un- 
matched in  the  experience  of  ages,  towards  the 
first  rank  in  the  synod  of  states.  Make  some 
noble  biography  every  year  more  familiar  to  your 
heart.  In  this  way  the  scholars  of  the  country  can 
contribute  more  than  tons  of  powder,  more  than 
sheaves  of  steel,  more  than  parks  of  Dahlgreens, 
more  than  bombproof  forts,  a  fleet  of  monitors, 
to  the  defences  of  the  republic.  They  contribute 
power,  the  very  core  of  power,  —  inspiration  to 
the  character  of  the  land,  —  energy  that  will  use 
the  material  forces  to  some  noble  purpose.  Fit 


in  their  Academic   Years.  433 

yourselves  to  bear  part  in  this  mission  of  baptizing 
the  nation  in  its  traditions  through  which  God  will 
sustain  its  renewed  vitality. 

Lay  the  foundations  of  knowledge  firm  in  the 
years  of  your  academic  privilege ;  follow  your 
bent  if  possible  in  seeking  your  profession  ;  learn 
from  your  outlook  over  the  field  of  knowledge 
the  lesson  of  mental  tolerance  and  respect ;  live 
for  your  country  by  the  patriotism  of  your  studies 
as  of  your  feeling :  thus  much  I  have  hinted  to 
you  in  fragmentary  and  incompetent  pages,  of  the 
duties  of  students  in  their  academic  years.  And 
here  we  must  close.  Yet  to  close  here  with  no 
further  word  would  be  to  leave  our  walls,  humble 
as  they  are,  unroofed.  The  elements  and  the 
heights  of  knowledge  are  revelations  to  man  of 
the  Infinite  intellect,  sparks  and  streams  from  the 
insufferable  brightness.  The  aptitudes  of  the 
mind  and  soul  are  from  him  whose  inspiration 
giveth  us  understanding,  and  who  supplies  diver- 
sities of  gifts  with  his  one  Spirit.  We  are  called 
to  toleration  because  all  schools  in  science,  phi- 
losophy, and  faith  are  classes  which  he  is  lead- 
ing by  various  explorations  towards  the  home  of 
light.  And  it  is  he  whose  dial  marks  the  age 
of  states,  and  whose  finger  determines  the  times 
before  appointed  and  the  bounds  of  their  habita- 
tions. Knowledge  has  its  source  and  crown  and 
nobleness,  its  motive  and  vigor,  in  him  and  his 
service  and  his  blessing. 

Him  we  discern  in  every  star  and  in  the  mystic 


434      Intellectual  Duties  of  Students. 

fellowship  of  stars ;  him  and  a  word  from  him  in 
the  laws  and  bounty  of  the  world ;  him  in  the 
breadth  of  truth  which  no  finite  capacities  can 
drain  ;  him  in  man  ;  him  in  the  head  of  humanity 
and  nations,  "  the  Word  made  flesh."  Knowledge 
is  dark  and  goodness  discrowned  that  do  not  bow 
before  his  light  and  consecrate  themselves  to  his 
will.  I  have  spoken  of  patriotism,  and  the  foster- 
ing of  it  by  scholars  in  their  vocation.  Hear 
these  words  of  an  American  patriot  and  scholar, 
himself  for  years  the  head  of  the  oldest  university 
of  New  England,  a  patriarch  now,  a  connecting 
link,  almost  the  last,  between  this  age  and  the 
Revolution,  born  before  the  first  continental  Con- 
gress, a  youth  of  seventeen  at  the  inauguration 
of  President  Washington,  now  in  the  full  pos- 
session of  his  faculties  at  fourscore  and  ten,  and 
believing  in  the  eloquent  words  which  I  am  to 
quote  more  devoutly  as  he  steps  nearer  and 
nearer  the  light  which  looks  like  shadow  to  our 
fleshly  eyes  :  "  Human  happiness  hath  no  perfect 
security  but  freedom  ;  freedom  none  but  virtue ; 
virtue  none  but  knowledge  ;  and  neither  freedom 
nor  virtue  nor  knowledge  has  any  vigor  or  immor- 
tal hope  except  in  the  principles  of  the  Christian 
faith  and  the  sanctions  of  the  Christian  religion." 

1862. 


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